Demopheles.  Instead of taking an undisguised pleasure in prophesying the downfall of Christianity, how I wish you would consider what a measureless debt of gratitude European humanity owes to it, how greatly it has benefited by the religion which, after a long interval, followed it from its old home in the East.  Europe received from Christianity ideas which were quite new to it, the Knowledge, I mean, of the fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, that the true end of our existence lies beyond it.  The Greeks and Romans had placed this end altogether in our present life, so that in this sense they may certainly be called blind heathens.  And, in keeping with this view of life, all their virtues can be reduced to what is serviceable to the community, to what is useful in fact.  Aristotle says quite naively, Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are the most useful to others.  So the ancients thought patriotism the highest virtue, although it is really a very doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity and an enlightened self-interest are main elements in it.  Just before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all the virtues, in order to discuss them singly.  They are Justice, Courage, Temperance, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Liberality, Gentleness, Good Sense and Wisdom.  How different from the Christian virtues!  Plato himself, incomparably the most transcendental philosopher of pre-Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than Justice; and he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, whereas the rest make a happy life, vita beata, the aim of all virtue, and moral conduct the way to attain it.  Christianity freed European humanity from this shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow, uncertain existence of every day,

                          coelumque tueri
  Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice, but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works, Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies, Patience, Humility, Resignation, Faith and Hope.  It even went a step further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we need deliverance.  It preached despisal of the world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one’s will, that is, turning away from life and its illusory pleasures.  It taught the healing power of pain:  an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity.  I am quite ready to admit that this earnest, this only correct view of life was thousands of years previously spread all over Asia in other forms, as it is still, independently of Christianity; but for European humanity it was a new and great revelation.  For it is well known that the population of Europe consists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe; on their wanderings these races lost the original religion of their homes,