closed, and even the art of writing was almost lost. Then it was that the cohesion and development of Western Europe were saved by a new and a wonderful thing. From the East, the home of religions, had spread, like an exhalation, Christianity, that religion which proves by its survival that it is the fittest sanction for the will of man. This religion, entering as a new spirit into the ancient fabric of Roman Empire, was to hold men’s service in heart and soul as well as in body; yet to this end no mere mystic or personal religion could suffice: clothing itself with the political and ritual pride and even with the mythology of the pagan Empire it inspired a new adoration; but it imposed also upon Europe a catholic and elaborated creed. To preserve the authority of the common faith not only must every knee be bowed, not only must every heart be touched, but to build and to repair its fabric every mind must also bring its service. How the scheme of the Faith was built up, how oriental ecstasy and hellenistic subtlety, possessing themselves of the machinery of Roman pomp, were wrought to this end, we may briefly consider. As, politically, under Diocletian and Constantine the ancient world gave place to the new, so in the third century philosophy was born again in neo-platonism[4], the offspring of the coition of East and West in Alexandria, where all religions and all philosophies met together. The world and the flesh were crucified that by the spirit, man might enter into God[5]. Pure in its ethical mood, neo-platonism, says Harnack, led surely to intellectual bankruptcy; the irruption of the barbarians was not altogether the cause of the eclipse of natural knowledge: to transcendental intuition the wisdom of the world had become foolishness. Yet even then, as again and again, came the genius of Aristotle to save the human mind. The death of Hypatia was the death of the School of Alexandria, but in Athens neo-platonism survived and grew. Proclus, ascetic as he was, was versed also in Aristotle; and he compelled the Eastern mysteries into categories: so that on the closure of the School of Athens by Justinian (A.D. 529) a formal philosophy was bequeathed to the Faith; the first scholastic period was fashioned, and the objects and methods of enquiry were determined for thirty generations. From Aristotle Europe adopted logic first, and then metaphysics, yet both in method and in purpose Origen and Augustine were platonists; rationalised dogma lived upon dialectic, and conflicted with mysticism; but logic, dogma and mysticism alike disdained experience.