n impossible idea. Whoever entertains it has
not come within the region of profitable philosophising on that subject.
His science is not wide enough to cover all existence. He has not
discovered that there can be no moral allegiance except to the ideal.
His certitude and his arguments are no more pertinent to the religious
question than would be the insults, blows, and murders to which, if he
could, he would appeal in the next instance. Philosophy may describe
unreason, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Bossuet: Discours sur l'histoire universelle, Part II,
Chap. I.]

CHAPTER VII

PAGAN CUSTOM AND BARBARIAN GENIUS INFUSED INTO CHRISTIANITY

[Sidenote: Need of paganising Christianity.]

The western intellect, in order to accept the gospel, had to sublimate
it into a neo-Platonic system of metaphysics. In like manner the western
heart had to render Christianity congenial and adequate by a rich
infusion of pagan custom and sentiment. This adaptation was more gentle
and facile than might be supposed. We are too much inclined to impute an
abstract and ideal Christianity to the polyglot souls of early
Christians, and to ignore that mysterious and miraculous side of later
paganism from which Christian cultus and ritual are chiefly derived. In
the third century Christianity and devout paganism were, in a religious
sense, closely akin; each differed much less from the other than from
that religion which at other epochs had borne or should bear its own
name. Had Julian the Apostate succeeded in his enterprise he would not
have rescued anything which the admirers of classic paganism could at
all rejoice in; a disciple of Iamblichus could not but plunge headlong
into the same sea of superstition and dialectic which had submerged
Christianity. In both parties ethics were irrational and morals corrupt.
The political and humane religion of antiquity had disappeared, and the
question between Christians and pagans amounted simply to a choice of
fanaticisms. Reason had suffered a general eclipse, but civilisation,
although decayed, still subsisted, and a certain scholastic discipline,
a certain speculative habit, and many an ancient religious usage
remained in the world. The people could change their gods, but not the
spirit in which they worshipped them. Christianity had insinuated itself
almost unobserved into a society full of rooted traditions. The first
disciples had be