250 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



shortly, lie desires that Hellenism shall be a factor of 

 our culture. The true medisevalist can wish for no 

 more, but he claims as much. It is no resurrection of 

 the dead, no reversal of the theological current of the 

 Eeformation that he strives for. He believes that as 

 the mind of man ponders more deeply and more often 

 over " the miracles of the ancient creed," the broader will 

 become his intellectual horizon ; he will realise more com- 

 pletely the social origin of all creeds, their economic and 

 moral genesis, and with this recognition of the relativity of 

 religious belief the firmer will be the basis of his own 

 liberal faith. The intellectual progress of the microcosm 

 of the individual mind can lay no claim to completeness, 

 if it has not passed in review the same phases as have 

 been successively reached by the macrocosm the mind 

 of humanity at large mirrored in its intellectual history. 

 M. Eenan has said that it is heartrending to have to 

 admit that the charlatan who has never studied the past 

 can yet attain to " the Alpine heights of philosophy." 

 But the strength of his hold, the permanency of his foot- 

 ing, may well be doubted if he has not had the experience 

 which arises in the course of a laborious journey over the 

 lower summits of past thought. The Protestant, who 

 lauds the Eeformation and abuses mediaeval Catholicism 

 without having once opened a fifteenth-century devotional 

 book ; the Freethinker, who condemns Christianity with- 

 out having read a line of St. Augustine, or studied, even 

 at second hand, the thoughts of the great Doctors ; the 

 modern Socialist, who has never considered the mediaeval 

 guild and town government, these may, one or all, 

 have reached the Alpine heights of philosophy, but what 



