ence. In a certain limited
sense it was. Greece had become subjugated to Rome. Rome herself had
lost her military spirit and was losing her political power. But the
fighting instinct, and even the ruling spirit, are not synonymous with
civilization. The "decline and fall" of empires by no means necessarily
involves the decay of civilization. It is now generally realized that
the later Roman Empire was not, as was once thought, an age of social
and moral degeneration.[73] The State indeed was dissolving, but the
individual was evolving. The age which produced a Plutarch--for fifteen
hundred years one of the great inspiring forces of the world--was the
reverse of a corrupt age. The life of the home and the life of the soul
were alike developing. The home was becoming more complex, more
intimate, more elevated. The soul was being turned in on itself to
discover new and joyous secrets: the secret of the love of Nature, the
secret of mystic religion, and, not least, the secret of romantic love.
When Christianity finally conquered the Roman world its task very
largely lay in taking over and developing those three secrets already
discovered by Paganism.

It was inevitable, however, that in developing these new forms of the
emotional life, the ascetic bent of Christianity should make itself
felt. It was not possible for Christianity to cast its halo around the
natural sexual life, but it was possible to refine and exalt that life,
to lift it into a spiritual sphere. Neither woman the sweetheart nor
woman the mother were in ordinary life glorified by the Church; they
were only tolerated. But on a higher than natural plane they were
surrounded by a halo and raised to the highest pedestal of reverence and
even worship. The Virgin was exalted, Bride and Bridegroom became terms
of mystical import, and the Holy Mother received the adoring love of all
Christendom. Even in the actual relations of men and women, quite early
in the history of Christianity, we sometimes find men and women
cultivating relationships which excluded that earthly union the Church
looked down on, but yet involved the most tender and intimate physical
affection. Many charming stories of such relationships are found in the
lives of the saints, and sometimes they existed even within the
marriage bond.[74] Christianity led to the use of ideas and terms
borrowed from earthly love in a different and symbolic sense. But the
undesigned result was that a new force and b