mixed interests, secular and spiritual,
of that mighty Christian church which at that time was co-extensive with
Christianity in the West, gave to the Schoolmen a more instant, human,
and impassioned interest in the labours of that mysterious loom which
pursued its aerial web through three centuries.

As a consequence from all this, we affirm that the parallel is complete
between the situation on the one side of the early Greek authors, the
creators of Greek literature in the age of Pericles, and, on the other
side, of the Christian Schoolmen; (1) the same intense indolence, which
Helvetius fancied to be the most powerful stimulant to the mind under
the reaction of _ennui_; (2) the same tantalizing dearth of books--just
enough to raise a craving, too little to meet it; (3) the same chilling
monotony of daily life and absence of female charities to mould social
intercourse--for the Greeks from false composition of society and
vicious sequestration of women--for the scholastic monks from the
austere asceticism of their founders and the 'rule' of their order; (4)
finally the same (but far different) enthusiasm and permanent elevation
of thought from disinterested participation in forwarding a great
movement of the times--for the one side tending to the unlimited
aggrandisement of their own brilliant country; for the other,
commensurate with what is conceivable in human grandeur.

This sketch of Christianity as it is mysteriously related to the total
body of Philosophy actual or possible, present or in reversion, may seem
inadequate. In some sense it _is_ so. But call it a note or
'_excursus_,' which is the scholarlike name for notes a little longer
than usual, and all will be made right. What we have in view, is to
explain the situation of the Greeks under Pericles by that of the
Schoolmen. We use the modern or Christian case, which is more striking
from its monastic peculiarity, as a reflex picture of the other. We rely
on the moulding circumstances of Scholasticism, its awakened intellect,
its famishing eagerness from defect of books, its gloom from the exile
of all feminine graces, and its towering participation in an interest
the grandest of the age, as a sort of _camera obscura_ for bringing down
on the table before us a portraiture essentially the same of early Greek
society in the rapturous spring-time of Pericles.

If the governing circumstances were the same in virtue, then probably
there would be a virtual sam