g and filling their castles with
plunder; though in the courts, to be sure, there was no lack of insipid
love songs. What caused this utter transformation? Migration and
Christianity.

_Demopheles_. I am glad you reminded me of it. Migration was the source
of the evil; Christianity the dam on which it broke. It was chiefly by
Christianity that the raw, wild hordes which came flooding in were
controlled and tamed. The savage man must first of all learn to kneel,
to venerate, to obey; after that he can be civilized. This was done in
Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany by Winifred the Saxon, who was a
genuine Boniface. It was migration of peoples, the last advance of
Asiatic races towards Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of
those under Attila, Zenghis Khan, and Timur, and as a comic afterpiece,
by the gipsies,--it was this movement which swept away the humanity of
the ancients. Christianity was precisely the principle which set itself
to work against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of the
Middle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most necessary to set
limits to the savage barbarism of those masters of violence, the princes
and knights: it was what broke up the icefloes in that mighty deluge.
Still, the chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this life
pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over this
span of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks to lead us to eternal
welfare. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, a
sense unknown in Europe till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting
the morality and religion of the ancients side by side with those of
Christendom.

_Philalethes_. You are quite right as regards theory: but look at the
practice! In comparison with the ages of Christianity the ancient world
was unquestionably less cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths by
exquisite torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The ancients,
further, were very enduring, laid great stress on justice, frequently
sacrificed themselves for their country, showed such traces of every
kind of magnanimity, and such genuine manliness, that to this day an
acquaintance with their thoughts and actions is called the study of
Humanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries,
crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives in America, and the
introduction of African slaves in their place; and among the ancients
there is n