Compare the last two civilizations of the ancient world--the Greek and the Roman. Which is the most materialistic, the most natural, in its point of departure, and the most humanly ideal in its results? Undoubtedly the Greek civilization. Which on the contrary, is the most abstractly ideal in its point of departure--sacrificing the material liberty of the man to the ideal liberty of the citizen, represented by the abstraction of judicial law, and the natural development of human society to the abstraction of the State--and which became nevertheless the most brutal in its consequences? The Roman civilization, certainly. It is true that the Greek civilization, like all the ancient civilizations, including that of Rome, was exclusively national and based on slavery. But, in spite of these two immense defects, the former none the less conceived and realized the idea of humanity; it ennobled and really idealized the life of men; it transformed human herds into free associations of free men; it created through liberty the sciences, the arts, a poetry, an immortal philosophy, and the primary concepts of human respect. With political and social liberty, it created free thought. At the close of the Middle Ages, during the period of the Renaissance, the fact that some Greek emigrants brought a few of those immortal books into Italy sufficed to resuscitate life, liberty, thought, humanity, buried in the dark dungeon of Catholicism. Human emancipation, that is the name of the Greek civilization. And the name of the Roman civilization? Conquest, with all its brutal consequences. And its last word? The omnipotence of the Cæsars. Which means the degradation and enslavement of nations and of men. To-day even, what is it that kills, what is it that crushes brutally, materially, in all European countries, liberty and humanity? It is the triumph of the Cæsarian or Roman principle. Compare now two modern civilizations--the Italian and the German. The first undoubtedly represents, in its general character, materialism; the second, on the contrary, represents idealism in its most abstract, most pure, and most transcendental form. Let us see what are the practical fruits of the one and the other.