the scope of probability. Even Plato, in whom all wisdom and
ante-Christian culture culminated, was still, in this respect, a citizen
of the old world, for he, too, knew as yet nothing of the spiritual love
of a man for a woman. To him the love of an individual was but a
beginning, the road to the love of perfect beauty and the eternal ideas.

On the threshold of the second stage of the erotic life stands
Christianity, which, in sharp contrast to antiquity and to the classical
period, sought the centre and climax of life in the soul. The founder of
the "religion of love" _discovered_ the individual, and by so doing laid
the foundation for that metaphysical love which found its most striking
expression in the deification of woman and the cult of the Virgin Mary.
How this change of mental attitude was brought about is worked out in a
brilliant chapter, entitled "The Birth of Europe." The revivifying
influence of Christ's preaching and personality was stifled after the
first centuries by the rigid dogma and formalism which had altered his
doctrine almost past recognition. The Church was building up its
political structure and tolerated no rival. Art, literature, music, all
the enthusiasm and profound thought of which the human mind is capable,
were pressed into her service. Independent thought was heresy, and the
death of every heretic became a new fetter which bound the intellect of
man. But about the year 1100, when the mighty edifice was complete, and
the pope and his bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted
them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the
population of Europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the
new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for
poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found
expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy
Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its
radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between
the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the
Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, a
goddess. The drudge, the patiently suffering wife, were things of the
past. A new ideal had been set up and men worshipped it with bended
knees.

"She shines on us as God shines on his angels,"

sang Guinicelli.

It was in a small country in the South of France, in Provence, that