fference to martyrdom. Life was hardly worth having. He says that
during the whole period of the empire there was no improvement in the
useful arts, no new invention, and no new device to facilitate
production. Neither was there any improvement in the art of war, in
literature, or the fine arts. As to transportation and commerce there
seems to have been gain in the first centuries of the Christian
era.[123] Such inventions as were made required a very long time to work
their way into general use. This sluggishness is most apparent in mental
labor. After the time of Hadrian science cannot be said to have existed.
The learned only cited their predecessors. Philosophy consisted in
interpreting old texts. The only gains were in religion, and those all
were won by Semites or other peoples of western Asia.[124] Both Greeks
and Romans exterminated the _elite_ of their societies, and pursued a
policy which really was a selection of the less worthy.[125] Men fled
from the world. They wanted to get out of human society. They especially
wanted to escape the state. The reason was that they suffered pain in
society, especially from the political institutions. The Christian
church gave to this renunciation of social rights and duties the
character of a religious virtue. "Pessimism took possession of the old
peoples at the beginning of the Christian era. This world is regarded as
delivered over to destruction. Men long for a better life and the
immortality of the gods, outside of this transitory existence. To this
sentiment corresponds the division of the universe into a world of light
above, the realm of the good, and a world of darkness below, where the
evil powers dwell. Men live in a middle space. Myths explained how our
world arose as a mixture of good and evil, between the two realms of
good and evil. Man belongs to both; to the world of light by his soul,
to the world of darkness by his body. Men struggle for redemption from
this world and from carnality, and long to soar through the series of
the heavens, so as to come before the face of the highest God, there to
live forever. This one can do after death, if he has during life
undergone the necessary consecration, and has learned the words which
can open heaven for him. In order to impart the consecration, and break
the powers of darkness, one of the higher gods, the Redeemer-God,
himself descended to earth. This religious theory is held by secret
sects. The folk religions are d