... coelumque tueri
  Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

Accordingly, Christianity does not only preach Justice, but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Charity, Reconciliation, Love of one’s Enemies, Patience, Humility, Renunciation, Faith, and Hope.  Indeed, it went even further:  it taught that the world was of evil and that we needed deliverance; consequently it preached contempt of the world, self-denial, chastity, the giving up of one’s own will, that is to say, turning away from life and its phantom-like pleasures; it taught further the healing power of suffering, and that an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity, I willingly admit that this serious and only correct view of life had spread in other forms throughout Asia thousands of years previously, independently of Christianity as it is still; but this view of life was a new and tremendous revelation to European humanity.  For it is well known that the population of Europe consists of Asiatic races who, driven out from their own country, wandered away, and by degrees hit upon Europe:  on their long wanderings they lost the original religion of their homes, and with it the correct view of life; and this is why they formed in another climate religions for themselves which were somewhat crude; especially the worship of Odin, the Druidic and the Greek religions, the metaphysical contents of which were small and shallow.  Meanwhile there developed among the Greeks a quite special, one might say an instinctive, sense of beauty, possessed by them alone of all the nations of the earth that have ever existed—­a peculiar, fine, and correct sense of beauty, so that in the mouths of their poets and in the hands of their artists, their mythology took an exceptionally beautiful and delightful form.  On the other hand, the earnest, true, and profound import of life was lost to the Greeks and Romans; they lived like big children until Christianity came and brought them back to the serious side of life.

Phil.  And to form an idea of the result we need only compare antiquity with the Middle Age that followed—­that is, the time of Pericles with the fourteenth century.  It is difficult to believe that we have the same kind of beings before us.  There, the finest development of humanity, excellent constitutional regulations, wise laws, cleverly distributed offices, rationally ordered freedom, all the arts, as well as poetry and philosophy, at their best; the creation of works which after thousands of years have never been equalled and are almost works of a higher order of beings, whom we can never approach; life embellished by the noblest fellowship, as is portrayed in the Banquet of Xenophon.  And now look at this side, if you can.  Look at the time when the Church had imprisoned the minds, and violence the bodies of men, whereby knights and priests could lay the whole weight of life on the common beast