Part 2

But before this relief arrives, iniquity shall have reached its height. It is at work already within the sacred precincts of the Church itself. It is with greater difficulty that God's vicar subdues the inner than the outer enemies. On the one hand many a man believes that he has found in his own reason and conscience leading truths, which he arrays, without any authority outside of himself, against those commandments which have come from above, and the divine origin of which is confirmed by the faith of a hundred generations. He places himself in an attitude of opposition to the common faith. Thus originate the heresies,--those cancers on the body of the congregation which must be cured by the iron, when salves will not restore, and by fire when the iron is ineffective. On the other hand men are so overpowered by their passions that they abandon the God who rebukes them, and become the bondsmen of another god who shows them favor. Pride, fettered by obscure descent, and keen appetite for pleasure chained from gratification by penury and privation, shake their shackles in despair, and finally call the Morning Star of old to their assistance. The archfiend promises pleasures without stint, and power without limitation. The poor mortal for dread of the pains which afflict his body is urged on to his destruction. His body formed from the dust of the accursed earth, and always a centre of sensual desires, is abandoned by God a prey to the assaults of the devil. "Here somebody loses an eye, somebody there a hand; one falls into the fire and is burned to death, one into the water and is drowned; another climbs a ladder and breaks his neck, another again stumbles on the even ground and breaks a leg. All such unforeseen accidents, occurring daily, are but the devil's thumps and strokes which he inflicts upon us from sheerest malice."[7] Still more: the demon is able to take possession so thoroughly of the human body that he becomes, as it were, its second soul, moves its limbs, utters blasphemies with its tongue at which even their fiendish author can not but tremble. But though the God-fearing man, like pious Job, is benefited by such afflictions, and although prayer is a powerful refuge, still there is a continually growing number of those who, driven by cowardly dread of the might of the Prince of Evil, seek their safety in a league with him; so much the more as he lends them a partial control of the elements, and thus a means of employment and of doing harm to others. Thus the dire pestilence of sorcery multiplies its victims; and in the black hours of midnight hundreds of thousands who bear the name of Christian, on mountains and in deserts perform clandestine rites in honor of their Satanic master. Time ripens for the advent of Antichrist, for the Day of Judgment and the final conflagration.

In the flames of this last day the revolving heavens and the earth are destroyed. Motion, activity, strife, history,--all are at an end. The Empyrean and Hell alone remain, as the antipodal extremes of the former universe. This conflagration is not a universal purifier, annihilating what has no existence in itself.[8] It only separates forever the gold from the dross. The kingdom of the devil continues to exist, and its prey is its own for evermore. But it exists thus only because an eternal existence means an eternal punishment for its ruler as well as for his subjects. From the new heavens and the new earth which the fiat of God has created to be the dwelling-place of those who have escaped destruction, these ransomed spirits perceive the gnashing of teeth and lamentation of their doomed brethren, and look down upon their tortures and misery, not with compassion but with joy, because they recognize in their punishment the vindication of divine justice; not with pain but delight, because the sight of their wretchedness doubles their own felicity. From the depths of that gulf of misery ascend without ceasing, to the Empyrean, cries of despair, blasphemies of defiance, and curses of rage, yet do they not disturb the hymns which saints and angels sing ever around the throne of God and of the Lamb; they only intensify the solemnity of the worship.[9]

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Such in its chief features was the cosmic philosophy of the Middle Ages; not abstractly considered, but such as existed in reality during many centuries among Christian people, guiding their thoughts, imagination and feelings, and governing their actions. Remains of it are still apparent in the systems of existing sects, though incompatible with the new philosophy which the human mind has been laboring to unfold. Ever since the intellect of Christendom began to free itself in the sixteenth century from faith by authority, the influence of the old views upon the various forms which life takes on, has been gradually declining.

Many of those characteristics which so strangely contrast the state of society in the Middle Ages with the preceding Hellenic and the subsequent modern European civilizations, have their origin in different theories of the universe. It is not mere chance that we encounter, on the one hand, in the history of Greece, so many harmonious forms with repose and tranquil joy depicted in every lineament of their countenance, and on the other, in that of the Middle Ages, so many beings buried in deepest gloom or exalted in frenzied rapture, dripping with blood from self-inflicted wounds, or glowing with the fever of mystic emotion--not a mere chance that the former age loves those serene forms and immortalizes them in its heroic galleries, while the latter worships its eccentric figures and describes them in its legends as saintly models. It is not a mere accident that the art of Greece mirrors a beautiful humanity, while that of the Middle Ages loves to dwell upon monstrosities and throws itself between the extremes of awful earnestness and wild burlesque; not an accident only that the science of the Greek is rational--that he discovers the categories in Logic, and rears a most perfect structure of rigid demonstration in his Geometry, while the science of the Middle Ages on the contrary is _magic_,--is a doctrine of correspondencies, Astrology, Alchemy, and Sorcery.

To the Greek the universe was a harmonious unity. The law of reason, veiled under the name of fate, ruled the gods themselves. The variegated events of the myth lay far away in the distance; they did not even warp the imagination of the poet, when he occupied himself with them; still less the faith of the multitude, and least of all the investigations of the thinker. The uninterrupted sequence of events invited to contemplation, which could be indulged in the more readily, as no one pretended to have received as a gift a complete system of revealed truth, and the more freely, as no authority forced the individual to choose between such a system and perdition. In general no doubt was entertained concerning the ability of Reason to penetrate to the inner essence of things, since no knowledge of the fall of man, which annihilated this ability, had reached the Greeks. In regard to knowledge the Greek consequently built on evidence and inner authority. The same was the case in regard to morality. They were convinced that those impulses which promoted the happiness of domestic life, were good; and that those which did not counteract it were at least justified; and thus they enjoyed with moderation the gifts of nature, without suspicion that the bountiful giver was accursed. The ideal of wisdom which they had framed, was based on their inner experience, whether it had the joyous features of Epicurus, the severer lineaments of Zeno, or the mild and resigned expression of Epictetus; and when they exerted themselves to realize it in their lives, they always proceeded upon the supposition that this would be possible by a daily strengthening of the will. The exertion put forth by the Greeks to attain to purity and virtue was, as it were, a system of gymnastics for developing the muscles of the brain. The same power and self-confidence were displayed in these endeavors as in the palaestra. Sighs and anguish were strangers to this kind of reformatory effort. Yet was it not altogether fruitless. The old adage that God helps those who help themselves can be here applied. That it developed great, powerful, and noble natures was so undeniable that even one of the Christian fathers, upon considering their achievements, began to doubt if his way of attaining perfection was really the only one, until he succeeded in convincing himself that "The virtues of the Gentiles are shining vices." The harmonious personality of the Greek and the rationality of Grecian science depended on the unity, the harmony of their cosmic views--upon this, that they conceived of the whole as a unity in its diversity, not as an irreconcilable disunion of two absolutely antagonistic principles.

If, on the contrary, the highest ruling power in nature is an arbitrary divine caprice, if the world which lies open before mankind is ruled by another's purely fortuitous decrees, themselves interfered with continually by hostile influences from an infernal kingdom; if, moreover, this struggle rages not merely in the external world, but also in the very core of human nature, vitiating her reason, feelings and will, so to employ them without her agency as means to her exaltation or perdition, then is there indeed no causality to be sought for, and consequently no field anywhere for scientific investigation. Were there even any such thing as science, it would lie far beyond the powers of man, since reason, a mere plaything for demoniac powers, can not be trusted. Neither has his personality any longer its centre of gravity within itself. Then is man in excessive need of such an institution of deliverance as the Church, which teaches him what the divine authority has arbitrarily decided to be good or evil; while the supernatural means of grace, the sacraments, afford him power of resisting evil, and absolve him from his failings. In this way external authority supplants the inner, which is torn up by the roots. That ideal of human perfection which is possible under such conditions, and which actually arises because the native activity of the mind constantly endeavors to bring all accepted notions into union, places itself on the doctrine of authority as its foundation, and accepts its supernatural character. That the ideal of the Middle Ages is ascetic and its science magical, is directly consequent upon its dualistic conception of the universe and of its peculiar nature.

The dualism of the Middle Ages was derived from Persia. It is the essential idea of the Zoroastrian doctrine, which finally, after a long struggle against the unitarian notions of the Greeks, penetrates the Occident and completely conquers it. This victorious combat of the Orient against Europe is the sum of history between Cyrus and Constantine. The external events which fill those centuries obtain their true significance when within and behind them one perceives the struggle between the two conflicting systems of ideas. Like concealed chess-players they move their unconscious champions against each other on the board of history.

When Cyrus sends home the Jewish prisoners from the rivers of Babylon to the mountains of Jerusalem, he gains for dualism that important flank-position on the Mediterranean the significance of which is shown centuries after in the progress of the battle. The "Adversary" (Satan) who sometimes appears in the most recent portions of the Old Testament, written under Persian influence, and plays a continually widening role in the Rabbinical literature, is the Judaized Ahriman; the demoniacs who in the time of Christ abounded in Palestine testify that the demon-belief of Persian dualism had penetrated into the imagination and feeling of the Jews, and there borne fruit. By the side of this peaceful conquest the great war-drama between Greece and Persia is enacted. Although this is not recognizedly a religious war, it is nevertheless Ormuzd and Ahriman who are repelled at Marathon, Salamis and Platæa, it is the Grecian unitarianism which is saved in these battles to develop itself, for a season undisturbed, into a radiant and beautiful culture. As has been shown already, magic, and belief upon authority, are the necessary consequences of a dualistic religion; the restriction and annihilation of free personality are equally necessary consequences of belief by authority. Can any one regarding the conflict which raged on the field of Marathon, fail to recognize the clash of two spiritual opposites, two different systems of ideas, when he sees the bands of Greeks, drawn from their agorai (places for political discussion) and gymnasiums, advance cheerfully and garlanded, but without depreciating the danger, to meet the innumerable hosts of the Orient driven on by the scourge of their leaders? On the one side, a fully developed free personality, which has its origin in a harmonious conception of nature, on the other, blind submission to external force. On the one side, liberty, on the other, despotism. One may add by the help of a logical conclusion, though this may seem more removed,--on the one side rationality, on the other magic.

Strengthened thus by victory Europe goes to seek the enemy in his own country. Alexander conquers Asia. But the new Achilles is fettered in the chains of his own slave. For while Greek culture is spreading over the surface of the conquered countries, the Oriental spirit advances beneath it in a contrary direction. The waves of the two ideal currents are partly mingled. In the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamus the literatures of the Orient and of the Occident flow together; in their halls meet the sages of the East and West; in their doctrinal systems Zoroaster and Plato, fancy and speculation, magic and rationalism are blended in the most extraordinary way. The victory of Alexander was that of the warrior, and not that of sober Aristotle's pupil. The Judaico-Alexandrian philosophy blooms, and gnosticism,--that monstrous bastard of specifically different cosmical systems, is already begotten, when Christianity springs up in Palestine, and unites itself with the Jewish dualism derived from Zoroaster, and thus proceeds to conquer the world by the weapons of belief.

In the mean time Rome has extended and established its empire. The nationalities included in it have been mingled together; their various gods have been carried into the same Pantheon; and their ideas have been brought face to face. The universal empire, to maintain its existence, has been forced to centralize itself into a despotism of the Oriental type, the free forms of state have perished, philosophical skepticism and eudemonism have abolished among the cultured classes the inherited notions of religion. All this, with its accompaniments of moral depravity and material necessity, have prepared the soil of the Occident for receiving the seed of the new religion. Emptiness and misery make the difference between ideality and reality, between good and evil, all the more perceptible even to unitarian nations. Dualism thus prepared for in the realms of thought and feeling, spreads in Christian form with irresistible force over the Roman provinces. Innumerable masses of the poor and oppressed devote themselves to the "philosophy of the Barbarians and the Orient" (as a Greek thinker called Christianity) because they recognize in it their own experience of life, and have full assurance in their hope of relief.

The Hellenico-Roman paganism offers a fruitless resistance. The persecutions on the part of the state only hasten the spread of Christianity. What the state can not do, perhaps the Hellenic culture and philosophy may do. These, once mutually hostile, are reconciled in the face of common danger. The dying lamp of antiquity flares and brightens when pure hearts and profound minds, otherwise despising the myths as superstition, now grasp them as symbols of higher truths. Philosophy goes forth, in the form of Neoplatonism.

But Neoplatonism has itself apostatized from the rational and unitarian. Plotinus and Ammonius Saccas try in vain to restore it. It only unwittingly helps its adversary, especially when, to gain the masses, it consents to compete with him in miracles. Jamblichus and others practice secret arts in order to outrival the Christian magi, and they glorify Pythagoras and Appollonius of Tyana as fit to rank with Jesus of Nazareth in miraculous gifts. By this they only contribute to the spread of magic and the principles of dualism. The current of Oriental notions proceeds all the more rapidly on its course of triumph.

Christian dualism already feels itself strong enough to battle not only against its declared enemies, but also those Occidental elements of culture which in its beginnings it had received into its bosom and which had procured its entrance among the more intelligent classes. It feels instinctively that even the school of thought which has sprung up within the Church is far too unitarian and rationalistic to be tolerated in the long run. Such men as Clemens of Alexandria and Origen, who are struck by what is external and imperishable in Christianity, and know how to separate this from its dualistic form, fight a tragical battle for the union of belief and thought. Admitting that Christ is all in all, the immediate power and wisdom of God, they nevertheless wish to save the Hellenic philosophy from the destruction which a fanaticism, revelling in the certainty and all-sufficiency of revelation, directs against every expression of an occidental culture, whether in national life, or art, or science. They point out that philosophy, if it can do nothing else that is good, can furnish rational weapons against those who assail faith, and that it can and ought to be the "real wall of defence about the vineyard." Their argument is without effect. Philosophy is of the devil: yea, everything true and good in life and doctrine which heathendom has possessed, is declared by one of the fathers to be the imposture of Satan (_ingenia diaboli quædam de divinis affectandis_); and faith is so far independent of thought that it is better to say "I believe _because_ it is improbable, absurd, impossible."[10] In vain the dying Clemens exclaims: "Even if philosophy were of the devil, Satan could deceive men only in the garb of an angel of light: he must allure men by the appearance of truth, by the intermixture of truth and falsehood; we ought therefore to seek and recognize the truth from whatever source it come.... And even this gift to the pagans can have been theirs only by the will of God, and must consequently be included in the divine plan of educating humanity.... If sin and disorder are attributable to the devil, how absurd to make him the author and giver of so good a thing as philosophy!... God gave the Law to the Jews, and philosophy to the Gentiles, only to prepare for the coming of Christ." Such are the words that ring out the last dying echo of Hellenic culture and humanity! It is not a mere accident that with philosophy Clemens and Origen also sought to save the unitarian principles in so far as to reject the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell, and maintain that the devil will finally become good, and God be all in all. But such a view could not command attention at a time when Christianity, only because it was not sharply and consistently dualistic, felt itself endangered by that wholly consistent and thorough-going dualism which under the name of Manicheism once more advanced against Europe from the Persian border. Although Manicheism seemed to incur defeat, nevertheless one of its former adherents, Augustine, infused its spirit into the Church. During the century which followed him the Germanic migration destroyed, along with the last schools, the last vestiges of Græco-Romaic culture. The Barbarians were persuaded to receive baptism, often by means of pomp and deceit; their divinities, as formerly the denizens of Olympus, were degraded to evil demons. Every thing antecedent to their union with the Church or disconnected with it,--the old experiences and traditions of these converted nations,--all was condemned and referred to the world of evil. The dominion of Oriental dualism in Europe was absolutely established, and the long night of the Dark Ages had set in. Six centuries separate Proclus, the last Neoplatonican of any note, and Augustine the last of the Fathers educated in philosophy, from Anselm the founder of scholasticism! Between them lies an expanse in which Gregory the Great and Scotus Erigena are almost the only stars, and these by no means of the first magnitude. "There are deserts in time, as well as space," says Bacon.

When again a feeble attempt at scientific activity was possible, the monkish scholar was happy enough to possess a few maculated leaves of Aristotle, obtained, but not directly, from the Arabs. Upon these leaves he read with amazement and admiration the method for a logical investigation. It was, for the rest, Hermes Trismegistus, Dionysius Areopagita (the translation of Scotus Erigena), and other such mystical works from unknown hands, with here and there touches of Neoplatonism which had been inserted by the dreamy scholiast when in need of material for rounding out the cosmology, the principles of which he had found in the dogmas of the Church.

As a matter of course the Dark Ages could not perceive, still less admit, the intimate relation existing between its cosmic views and those of Zoroaster; but still a dim suspicion of it can be detected. The learned men of the Middle Ages ascribed to Zoroaster the founding of the magical sciences. Sprenger (author of Malleus Malificarum, of which fatal work hereafter), Remigius, Jean Bodin, Delrio, and several other jurists and theologians, who have acquired a sad notoriety as judges of witch-trials, in their writings ascribe the origin of witchcraft to Zoroaster.