re all the blessing
and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like
every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the
infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to
the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent
spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared
with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning
disappears before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came
subsequently to wither; but the Latins preserved their simplicity
of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the
Greeks. As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim
it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the
destroyers of faith; and, much as this process at once of development
and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of
nature certain results have been reserved to the epoch of early
simplicity--results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours
to attain. The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes,
which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect
as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible
for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed
thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self-devotion, the
power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such
union. It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of
history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the
expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the
Greeks; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose,
so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest
organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth
that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with
their respective defects. The deepest and ultimate reason of the
diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that
Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth
come into contact with the East. No people on earth was great
enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic
or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history
has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of
Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil. But if for
this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not
less for