LANDSCAPE 285 



the classification of beasts and vegetables. Man's place in 

 the world was on the point of being apprehended. Never- 

 theless, the inevitable collision between theology and science 

 the coming reconstruction of opinion regarding the relation 

 of God to the universe and of mankind to this planet had 

 as yet been hardly dreamed of. It is true that the elaborate 

 structures of orthodox divinity were on the verge of being 

 rudely shaken. Yet few minds forecast the revolution ; and 

 theologians imagined that they were moving with the current 

 of modern thought when they borrowed a shallow scheme of 

 teleological optimism from what they deigned to notice in 

 the sciences. 



Ill 



The great creation of the Middle Ages, according to 

 M. Renan, was the sentiment of the Infinite. We have further 

 defined this saying by showing how Christianity banished 

 from heaven and earth the antique deities and demi-gods, the 

 girls and boys transmuted into trees and flowers and water- 

 falls, leaving man alone in a world of which he had no 

 positive knowledge, face to face with a supreme abstraction, 

 God. This God, imagined omniscient and omnipresent, was 

 also imagined as separate from both nature and man. He 

 had brought the universe into existence by his word ; and he 

 could dissolve it in the twinkling of an eye. The Infinite 

 thus became the sole eventual reality. All else was illusion, 

 mirage, depending on the divine caprice. 



But our mind cannot remain satisfied with abstractions. 

 The vacuum created by the demolition of mythological 

 lumber was therefore filled to some extent by another set. of 

 polytheistic deities Christ, Mary, Saints, Martyrs, Angels, 

 Devils. These, however, unlike the deities of paganism, had 

 no relation to nature. So far as the material universe was 

 concerned, that remained empty. The hierarchy of the 

 Church triumphant were moral entities personified ideals of 

 human love, struggle, patience, faith, purity, and sorrowing 

 experience. 



