CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 59 



ing out from the idea of leading the personality into an existence differ- 

 ent from the earthly, of creating with the aid of some kind of higher, 

 secret knowledge a happier world for the soul to live in. There thus arose a 

 half-mystical, half-experimental psychology, which was nurtured by philo- 

 sophical schools possessing sectarian organizations, like that of the Pythag 

 oreans in the old days. One of these schools, and the most fantastic of all, 

 actually called themselves neo-Pythagoreans; another, more scientifically 

 serious, was the neo-Platonic, which sought to bring the human spirit, along 

 the mystical path of introspection, into contact with the world of ideas, 

 which Plato declared to be the only true world. Through this development 

 the very idea of philosophy became radically altered; the philosopher was no 

 longer a lover of wisdom, as the name implies, but a lover of piety. But as 

 such he retained no interest in natural phenomena; his spirit in fact lived in 

 supernatural regions of space, and if he devoted any time to the objects of 

 nature, it was merely in order to discover the secret divine powers which, 

 hidden from the eyes of the ignorant, dwelt in plants and animals. 



For the belief in God awakened to new life during later antiquity; not 

 the old sacrificial faith ^ so indissolubly bound up with the inner life of the 

 petty states, but faith in a supreme power able to save the individual from 

 sorrow and suffering. Numerous religious brotherhoods were founded which 

 sought by mystical means to procure for their members peace and happiness 

 in this life, or at any rate in the life to come. Among these faiths appeared 

 Christianity, which was finally triumphant, thanks to the message of univer- 

 sal love and the sure promise of salvation which it offered to mankind, and 

 not least as a result of the strong community-organization which its first 

 followers set up, with unlimited charity within their ranks and stubborn 

 power of resistance against persecution from outside. But an epoch in which 

 the best of humanity sought their happiness in life beyond the bounds of 

 actual existence must inevitably be a period of decay, both materially and 

 within those spheres of the spiritual life which have to do with reality : exact 

 science as well as creative art. 



As early as the second century of our era, when material prosperity was 

 still at its highest, there appear signs of this spiritual disintegration; during 

 this century lived the last of the great classical authors — the Latin poet 

 Juvenal, and the Greek Lucian, by the side of a mass of representatives of the 

 new era: miracle-workers, soothsayers, and necromancers, whom they 

 strenuously but vainly opposed. At that time, too, lived the last great biolo- 

 gist of the age of classical culture, the physician Galen, who in his writings 



^ The cult of sacrifice was also revived, it is true, in late antiquity, but it was not so much 

 the old national cult as one accompanied by mystical, impassioned ceremonies, originating from 

 the East. To the noblest minds of the time, however, it had very little, or at any rate a purely 

 conventional, value. 



