genius, even in the act of confusing its expression
through foreign accretions. They had been thereby stimulated to civilise
themselves and encouraged also to believe themselves civilised somewhat
prematurely, when they had become heirs merely to the titles and
trappings of civilisation.

The process of finding their own art and polity, begun under foreign
guidance, was bound on the whole to diverge more and more from its Latin
model. It consisted now of imitation, now of revulsion and fanciful
originality; never was a race so much under the sway of fashions.
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without
reason and imitation without benefit. It marks very clearly that margin
of irresponsible variation in manners and thoughts which among a people
artificially civilised may so easily be larger than the solid core. It
is characteristic of occidental society in mediaeval and modern times,
because this society is led by people who, being educated in a foreign
culture, remain barbarians at heart. To this day we have not achieved a
really native civilisation. Our art, morals, and religion, though deeply
dyed in native feeling, are still only definable and, indeed,
conceivable by reference to classic and alien standards. Among the
northern races culture is even more artificial and superinduced than
among the southern; whence the strange phenomenon of snobbery in
society, affectation in art, and a violent contrast between the educated
and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, classes that live on
different intellectual planes and often have different religions. Some
educated persons, accordingly, are merely students and imbibers; they
sit at the feet of a past which, not being really theirs, can produce no
fruit in them but sentimentality. Others are merely _protestants_; they
are active in the moral sphere only by virtue of an inward rebellion
against something greater and overshadowing, yet repulsive and alien.
They are conscious truants from a foreign school of life.

[Sidenote: Tradition and instinct at odds in Protestantism.]

In the Protestant religion it is necessary to distinguish inner
inspiration from historical entanglements. Unfortunately, as the whole
doctrinal form of this religion is irrelevant to its spirit and imposed
from without, being due to the step-motherly nurture it received from
the Church, we can reach a conception of its inner spirit only by
studying its tendency and laws of cha