that it never consciously grasped or applied the central
idea of the Renascence,--the Hellenic idea of pursuing, in all lines of
activity, the law and science, to use Plato's words, of things as they
really are. Whatever direct superiority, therefore, Protestantism had
over Catholicism was a moral superiority, a superiority arising out of
its greater sincerity and earnestness,--at the moment of its apparition
at any rate,--in dealing with the heart and conscience. Its pretensions
to an intellectual superiority are in general quite illusory. For
Hellenism, for the thinking side in man as distinguished from the acting
side, the attitude of mind of Protestantism towards the Bible in no
respect differs from the attitude of mind of Catholicism towards the
Church. The mental habit of him who imagines that Balaam's ass spoke, in
no respect differs from the mental habit of him who imagines that a
Madonna of wood or stone winked; and the one, who says that God's Church
makes him believe what he believes, and the other, who says that God's
Word makes him believe what he believes, are for the philosopher
perfectly alike in not really and truly knowing, when they say _God's
Church_ and _God's Word_, what it is they say, or whereof they affirm.

In the sixteenth century, therefore, Hellenism re-entered the world,
and again stood in presence of Hebraism,--a Hebraism renewed and purged.
Now, it has not been enough observed, how, in the seventeenth century, a
fate befell Hellenism in some respects analogous to that which befell it
at the commencement of our era. The Renascence, that great reawakening
of Hellenism, that irresistible return of humanity to nature and to
seeing things as they are, which in art, in literature, and in physics,
produced such splendid fruits, had, like the anterior Hellenism of the
pagan world, a side of moral weakness and of relaxation or insensibility
of the moral fibre, which in Italy showed itself with the most startling
plainness, but which in France, England, and other countries was very
apparent, too. Again this loss of spiritual balance, this exclusive
preponderance given to man's perceiving and knowing side, this unnatural
defect of his feeling and acting side, provoked a reaction. Let us trace
that reaction where it most nearly concerns us.

Science has now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant
elements of difference which lie in race, and in how signal a manner
they make the genius and h