The advent of Christianity necessarily introduced a new epoch in the tendency of education as well as in the general course of social evolution. Its fundamental principles, unity with the absolute, supreme, personality as the destiny and possibility of each individual, the realization of the kingdom of God, to be governed by justice, love, peace, and felicity as the common aim of the whole body of humanity, should have become the higher realization of the Greek ideals of life. But Christianity in its historic form, as an outgrowth from the Semites, promulgated by single-minded enthusiasts, was fated to conflict with Hellenic thought. It not only neglected the civic and economic life of the state, but condemned, as asceticism crept in, the perfection and enjoyment of earthly existence. The natural man was evil; passion made the body the source of sin. Even the improvement of intellect or taste was considered to be contrary to religion. Its God became deprived of all His human qualities or content, and was made an abstract, negative spirituality. The kingdom of God receded to the other world beyond the grave or to some imagined distance. It conceived everything human and natural as opposed to the divine and spiritual, and strove to crush the body that the soul might live. Thus instead of a new heaven and a new earth, the age of death and darkness came to be introduced into the European world. Education in the Middle Ages was largely education through and for the Church. The reward of the victory of Christianity over the pagan world through that long-suffering struggle and martyrdom was the Church universal, enthroned above all other human institutions. The seat of divine authority, the ultimate standard of evaluation shifted from the state to the Church infallible. Schools were established, universities organized, but in them the young generation was trained to be better citizens of a future heavenly state or to serve ecclesiastic interests. Efficiency in social life or the qualities of individual personality as such were scarcely considered.