6 rREFACE. 



hove in sight, Thamus complied with the strange re- 

 quest, and a minute after, the coast resounded with in- 

 describable shrieks and lamentations that continued for 

 a long time, till they finally died away in the heights of 

 the Acarnanian Mountains. 



The tradition bears the mark of that suggestiveness 

 which distinguishes a philosophical allegory from a 

 priest-legend. Pan was the God of Nature. Can Plu- 

 tarch have divined the significance of the impending 

 change ? Whatever is natural is wrong, was the key- 

 stone dogma of the mediaeval schoolmen. The natural- 

 ism of antiquity was crushed by supernatural and anti- 

 natural dogmas. The worship of joy yielded to a wor- 

 ship of sorrow, the study of living nature to the study 

 of dead languages and barren sophisms. Literature 

 became a farrago of ghost-stories, monks' legends, 

 witchcraft- and miracle-traditions, and astrological vaga- 

 ries. The poison of antinaturalism tainted every science 

 and every art and perverted the very instincts of the 

 human mind. Painters vied in the representation of 

 revolting tortures. The exiles of Mount Parnassus 

 assembled on Mount Golgotha. The moralists that had 

 suppressed the Olympic festivals compensated the public 

 with autos-da-fe. The whole history of the Middle 

 Ages is, indeed, the history of a long war against 

 nature. 



But nature has at last prevailed. Delusions are 

 clouds, and the storm of the Thirty Years' War has 



