EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



obedience to priestly authority ; and in doing 

 these things, the feeling, still rife among men, 

 to which it appealed, was the old feeling of cor- 

 porate responsibility for opinion. 



The old feeling, thus strongly appealed to at 

 a time when its basis in the conditions of prime- 

 val society had been destroyed, received still 

 stronger reinforcement when the Church took 

 upon itself the tremendous task to which the 

 political forces of the Empire were no longer 

 competent of civilizing the barbaric world. 

 From the time of Ulfilas to the time of Anschar 

 there were five centuries of militancy, during 

 which all the power of the spiritual as well as of 

 the secular arm was taxed to the utmost in the 

 work of making the Teutonic barbarians adopt 

 the results of Graeco-Roman civilization. In 

 warfare of this sort, the Church could do no- 

 thing less than appeal to the only available reli- 

 gious conceptions with which the past experience 

 of its converts had made them familiar. As in 

 the political system of these ages of transition 

 between ancient and modern civilization we ob- 

 serve a partial and temporary retrogression to- 

 ward a pre-Roman tribal and local polity, as 

 exemplified in some of the aspects of feudalism, 

 so too in religious conceptions we may ob- 

 serve a partial and temporary renascence of 

 primitive pagan ideas. To say that the Church 

 adopted many pagan symbols is only to say that 

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