24 Contemporary Evolution. 



from the latter. In the former the confusion of God 

 with the world consists in making Him its material cause; 

 in the latter it consists in making Him its formal cause : 

 in both, the relation of all existing things to Him is that 

 of the appearance to the essence, that of the part to the 

 whole." * 



Before the advent of Christianity the worship of nature 

 had for untold ages entered into the very marrow of the 

 bones of our forefathers. The Christian Church, in spite 

 of its apparent mediaeval triumph, had on the masses but 

 an imperfect hold, and in some countries had but the 

 acceptance of a brief tradition from fathers on whom it 

 had been imposed by the sword a few centuries before. 

 What wonder then if, under the influences brought to 

 bear since the year 1500, Christianity is becoming disin- 

 tegrated over wide areas, and the old pagan sentiment 

 reappearing like some old classical poem on the surface 

 of a palimpsest from which the later mediaeval super- 

 scriptions are being removed ! 



As to the Renaissance, even its sympathetic historian, 

 Mr. W. H. Pater, observes : " One of the strongest cha- 

 racteristics of that outbreak . . . was its antinomi- 

 anism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral 

 and religious ideas of the age. In their search after the 

 pleasures of the senses and the imagination, in their care 



* T. W. Allies, " Formation of Christendom," part iii., p. 363. 



