nd aesthetic conception,
and indeed it was they who made a metaphorical expression into an
essential dogma: the pride natural to the Aryan race made them eager to
accept a religion which placed man in a still higher Olympus: a belief
in Christ was rapidly diffused, not as God but as the Man-God. These are
the true reasons, not only for the rapid spread of Christianity in
Europe, but also for the philosophic systems of the Platonists and
Alexandrines which preceded it. Although Philo was a Hebrew, and
probably knew nothing of Christ, he attained by means of Hellenism to
the idea of the Man-God; the Platonic Word, which was merely the
projection of God into human reason, was accepted for the same reason
as the Christian dogma of the Word made man.

"Let us see what new principles, what higher morality and civilization
were added by the diffusion of Christianity to those principles which
were the spontaneous product of the race. We must first consider what
part the pagan gods, as they were regarded by educated men, played in
the history of the European race, with respect to the individual and to
the commonwealth. The pagan Olympus, considered as a whole, and without
reference to the various forms which it assumed in different peoples,
was not essentially distinct from human society. Although the gods
formed a higher order of immortal beings, they were mixed up with men in
a thousand ways in practical life, and conformed to the ways of
humanity; they were constantly occupied in doing good or ill to mortals;
they were warmly interested in the disputes of men, taking part in the
conflicts of persons, cities, and peoples; special divinities watched
over men from the cradle to the grave, and they were loved or hated by
the gods by reason of their family and race. In short, the heavenly and
earthly communities were so intermixed that the gods were only superior
and immortal men.

"The people were accustomed to consider their deities as ever present,
distinct from, and yet inseparably joined with them; so that the
individual, the country, the tribes, were ever governed, guarded,
favoured, or opposed by special and peculiar gods. Olympus had a
history, since the acts of the gods took place in time and were
coincident with the history of nations, so that every event in heaven
corresponded with one on earth; the idea of divine justice was
exemplified in that of men, and both were perfected together. Among
pagans of the Aryan race