22 Contemporary Evolution. 



reposing amidst fragrant wild flowers and the hum of 

 busy insect life, look down on the peaceful ocean rippling 

 in sun-lit splendour at our feet, as we mark the sea-fowl 

 sailing in circles with rarely flapping wing, or listen to the 

 lark rising blithely through the summer air, how strong 

 with many will be the impulse towards a joyous cultus 

 of an underlying soul of which such visible beauty is 

 the living and palpitating garment ! The great Pan lives 

 once more, nor is Aphrodite unlikely to receive a mute 

 and mental homage. This world is felt to be lovely and 

 sweet indeed, and visions of exclusively terrestrial joy pass 

 before the mind, and tend to produce in it scanty reverence 

 for the forms and but slight admiration for the beauties 

 of Christian supernaturalism. 



It is in a sense which the foregoing comparison may 

 serve to illustrate that the whole modern movement dating 

 from the very first breath of the Renaissance may be 

 regarded as being essentially a return towards paganism 

 not of course (at least in the first instance) to the worship 

 of the old gods, but to much of the spirit which underlay 

 that worship. 



The essence of the paganism in Europe and Aryan 

 Asia with which Christianity contended, did not consist 

 in any definite credo, or in any exclusive cultus, else how 

 could the strange gods of the East have found a home 

 in the capital of the Roman empire ? The essence of 

 that paganism was, whatever may have been its remote 



