The history of mine own country, from 1789 through the nineteenth century, a history of revolution, of the conflict between ideals and realities, is a signal and a reminder to the nations." "You treat Christianity and Jacobinism as cognate ideas," said Leo, after a pause. "There is surely this distinction between them, that one was almost entirely religious, and the other almost entirely political." "Ah," said Renan, with a deprecating smile, "all religions are political, just as all politics are religious. Christianity with its notion of mankind as a brotherhood, and the Papacy with its notions of a spiritual empire, a suzerainty, over all peoples, have destroyed the ancient conception of the unity of Church and State. The religion of the Greeks was embodied in their laws; and the politics of the Jews, in their religion. The ideal conception of religion as something quite distinct from the State has proved unworkable, if not disastrous. All the churches have had to smite their mystics with the thunders of excommunication, to extinguish the inward light, to restrain the free play of thought. Even the most primitive form of Christianity, the Messianic notion, was purely political. If we are to talk on social questions we cannot separate religion from politics. The distinction between them is artificial; they are merely the opposite poles of a single idea." "Ah, well!" said Leo, shrugging his shoulders; "the progress of humanity is a chimæra if it ends merely in stagnation. These bleak, arid masses of mankind living without pleasures in their Chinese frugality, what future have they before them?" "An awakening," said Renan prophetically; "the Kings of Uruk reigning over a decadent civilisation, Sardanapalus foreseeing the stagnation of his people did not dream of a future which they had helped to create. The process of evolution acts in tides; there is a continuous ebb and flow; the seed lies hidden in the ground until the wizardry of Spring calls it forth, and rain and sunlight nourishing it into new life, it ripens for the harvest. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. In the ruined palaces of Nineveh the beasts of the desert bring forth their young, and the green lizards creep out from the crevices to sun themselves upon a fragment of some boastful inscription; but the music which echoed in its painted halls, the dancing and the choirs, the great processions of its Kings, its wisdom and folly, its vain desires and failures, its tears and laughter, these have their being still, they move mysteriously in us, a breath would quicken them into life again, we can rebuild them in moments that seem to have all the profundity of time."