ll-known, at a time of general decline
of manners, and of very great moral and national corruption; and its
extraordinary success must be partly explained by the prevalence of a
sort of intellectual and moral disease which had overpowered the
spirits of men after the fall of the ancient civilization and under
the demoralizing influence of the gradual collapse of the great Roman
empire. But even at that time those who stood intellectually high and
looked deeply into things recognized the whole danger of this new turn
of mind, and it is very remarkable that the best and most benevolent of
the Roman emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius, Julian, etc., were the most
zealous persecutors of Christianity, whilst it was tolerated by the
bad ones, such as Commodus, Heliogabalus, etc. When it had gradually
attained the superiority, one of its first sins against intellectual
progress consisted in the destruction by Christian fanaticism of the
celebrated Library of Alexandria, which contained all the intellectual
treasures of antiquity--an incalculable loss to science, which can never
be replaced. It is usually asserted in praise of Christianity that in
the middle ages the Christian monasteries were the preservers of science
and literature, but even this is correct only in a very limited sense,
since boundless ignorance and rudeness generally prevailed in the
monasteries, and innumerable ecclesiastics could not even read. Valuable
literary treasures on parchment contained in the libraries of the
monasteries were destroyed, the monks when they wanted money selling the
books as parchment, or tearing out the leaves and writing psalms upon
them. Frequently they entirely effaced the ancient classics, to make
room for their foolish legends and homilies; nay, the reading of the
classics, such as Aristotle for example, was directly forbidden by papal
decrees.

"In New Spain Christian fanaticism immediately destroyed whatever of
arts and civilization existed among the natives, and that this was not
inconsiderable is shown by the numerous monuments now in ruins which
place beyond a doubt the former existence of a tolerably high degree of
culture. But in the place of this not a trace of Christian civilization
is now to be observed among the existing Indians, and the resident
Catholic clergy keep the Indians purposely in a state of the greatest
ignorance and stupidity (see Richthofen, Die Zustande der Republic
Mexico, Berlin, 1854).

"Thus Chris