It was a reaction of Hebraism against Hellenism; and it powerfully manifested itself, as was natural, in a people with much of what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal affinity for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew life.  Eminently Indo-European by its humour, by the power it shows, through this gift, of imaginatively acknowledging the multiform aspects of the problem of life, and of thus getting itself unfixed from its own over- [164] certainty, of smiling at its own over-tenacity, our race has yet (and a great part of its strength lies here), in matters of practical life and moral conduct, a strong share of the assuredness, the tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews.  This turn manifested itself in Puritanism, and has had a great part in shaping our history for the last two hundred years.  Undoubtedly it checked and changed amongst us that movement of the Renascence which we see producing in the reign of Elizabeth such wonderful fruits; undoubtedly it stopped the prominent rule and direct development of that order of ideas which we call by the name of Hellenism, and gave the first rank to a different order of ideas.  Apparently, too, as we said of the former defeat of Hellenism, if Hellenism was defeated, this shows that Hellenism was imperfect, and that its ascendency at that moment would not have been for the world’s good.

Yet there is a very important difference between the defeat inflicted on Hellenism by Christianity eighteen hundred years ago, and the check given to the Renascence by Puritanism.  The greatness of the difference is well measured by the difference in force, beauty, significance and usefulness, between [165] primitive Christianity and Protestantism.  Eighteen hundred years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism; primitive Christianity was legitimately and truly the ascendent force in the world at that time, and the way of mankind’s progress lay through its full development.  Another hour in man’s development began in the fifteenth century, and the main road of his progress then lay for a time through Hellenism.  Puritanism was no longer the central current of the world’s progress, it was a side stream crossing the central current and checking it.  The cross and the check may have been necessary and salutary, but that does not do away with the essential difference between the main stream of man’s advance and a cross or side stream.  For more than two hundred years the main stream of man’s advance has moved towards knowing himself and the world, seeing things as they are, spontaneity of consciousness; the main impulse of a great part, and that the strongest part, of our nation, has been towards strictness of conscience.  They have made the secondary the principal at the wrong moment, and the principal they have at the wrong moment treated as secondary.  This contravention of the [166] natural order has produced, as such contravention always must produce, a certain confusion and false