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Mr. Simcox. — I think there is very little authentication in history of all 
the marvellous things that we hear about the Berserkers. 
The Chairman. — In his paper Mr. Gosse says : — 
“ Christianity alone takes no colour from the psychological conditions 
that surround it, but moulds to itself men of every shade of temperament.” 
This is more than doubtful. Let us look at the aspect which Christianity 
assumed in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. It was largely coloured by 
the intellectual tone of the Greeks, with whom it passed into a metaphysical 
discussion. On the other hand, the German form is one of the highest forms 
of Christianity that has ever existed. It is plain that the Christianity which has 
prevailed in different regions has been largely modified by the habits of thought 
and previous civilization which have prevailed in those regions ; in fact, it 
has followed the same common law which has affected other departments of 
human progress ; and, as I have said, it lias been largely coloured in its 
conception by the intellectual and moral forces by which it has been sur- 
rounded. This, I think, will not be denied by any one who has studied the 
history of the Christian Church. In the fourth paragraph of the paper there 
is a remarkable assertion that the Northern races had a higher moral ideal 
than had the Greek and Latin races. If we look at the Greek and Latin 
races, their representation of the idea of holiness is a strange misconception. 
Take the whole range of their literature, and you will not arrive at what 
we call the idea of holiness in its treatment of morals. The idea of holiness 
seems to have been never comprehended by the ancient races, and the Christian 
idea of purity is wonderfully absent from all ancient ethics. The Greek 
and Latin ideas of holiness consisted almost exclusively in outward obser- 
vances, and their purest moralists have indulged in images which we freely 
designate as impure. Our modern ideas on this subject have been largely 
developed in German Christianity, and I should have been glad if this paper 
had been a contrast, pointing out the distinctions between the grand idea of 
the German character and the grand idea of the Scandinavian character, and 
I should have been glad to have known the effects produced by the Scandinavian 
character, as distinguished from those produced by the German character 
We know that the social position of woman has been vastly superior in the 
Christian ages to what it ever was in Greek and Roman society, where it 
was extremely degraded. I cannot doubt that the state in which females were 
placed in the ancient world exercised a necessary lowering influence upon 
the moral aspects of that world. I have recently been reading Renan’s last 
work, and he states that the elevation of women and slaves first really began 
with the Neronian persecution. This is a remarkable admission for such an 
author. In his seventh paragraph, Mr. Gosse has referred to a very peculiar 
feature in these Icelandic people. It seems that they had an expectation of 
a renovation of society at some future period. If so, that is a most striking- 
contrast to the ideas of the ancient world. The millennium of the 
Greek and Roman philosophy was always placed in the past, and the genera 
despair with which the philosopher contemplated the prospect of man in the 
