This struggle touches upon the gravest problem that can occupy the human mind, and continually puts before us this perplexing question: "Should the purpose of life be only the search for happiness and beauty, or must we admit, as a law of nature, the dogma of suffering and death?" The former of these conceptions found its supreme formula in Greek paganism. The ultimate expansion of the latter leads us, on the one hand, to faith,--to the religion of sacrifice, and, on the other hand, into the domain of philosophy,--to the destruction of the desire to live, as conceived by Schopenhauer. It is this struggle between the two principles of Hellenic philosophy and Christian faith that Merezhkovsky has tried to show us by fixing, in his novels, the historic moments when this struggle reached its greatest intensity; and by making appear in these periods the characters who, according to him, are most typical and representative. For this reason he has chosen to give his readers pictures of the three epochs which he considers as culminating: first, the last attempt made to restore the worship of the gods a short time after the Emperor Constantine had brought about their ruin; secondly, the Renaissance, which, in spite of triumphant Christianity, shows us a glorious renewal of the arts and sciences of antiquity; finally, the beginning of the 18th century, the reign of Peter the Great, who tried to make a place for the gods of antiquity in Russia, where they were regarded with horror by the orthodox clergy. * * * * * In his novel, "The Death of the Gods," Merezhkovsky has painted the first of these epochs, the different phases of which revolve about the principal hero, the emperor Julian the Apostate. In "The Resurrection of the Gods" he develops, in sumptuous frescoes, the age of the Renaissance, personified by Leonardo da Vinci, who best typifies the character and tendencies of that time. In "Peter and Alexis," he retraces Russian life in the beginning of the 18th century, when it was dominated by the extraordinary character of Peter the Great.