Philosophy with the scholastics had consequently the same quality of want of independence as it had before this with the Christian Fathers and the Arabians. The Church as already constituted established itself amongst the Teutonic nations, and through its constitution it conditioned philosophy. The Christian Church had indeed spread itself abroad throughout the Roman world, but, more especially in the beginning, it merely formed a community of its own, by whom the world was renounced, and which made no special claims to recognition—or if such claims were made they were merely negative, because the individuals in the world were simply martyrs, thus renouncing the world. But the Church in time became dominant, and the Roman emperors, both of the East and of the West, embraced Christianity. Thus the Church attained to a position openly recognized and undisturbed, from which it exercised much influence upon the world. The political world, however, fell into the hands of the Teutonic nations, and thereby a new form arose, and to this the scholastic philosophy pertains. We know the revolution by the name of the Migration of the Nations (_supra_, pp. 23, 24). Fresh races inundated the ancient Roman world and established themselves therein; they thus erected their new world on the ruins of the old—a picture which Rome in its present aspect still presents. There the splendour of the Christian temples is due in part to the remnants of the ancient, and new palaces are built on ruins and have ruins all around.