Granted that the Teutonic nations received a powerful stimulus to civilization at the Renaissance by reverting to the ideas of Greco-Roman thinkers, not less true is it that for many centuries they had been kept by that same Greco-Roman civilization in a condition of spiritual dependence which was wholly in contradiction to their native character. They took over from it decadent ideas which were for a long time a hindrance to their normal spiritual life, and thence came that strange mixture of strength and weakness which is the chief characteristic of the Middle Ages. The dangerous elements in the Greco-Roman civilization of the past still show themselves in our spiritual life. It is because Oriental and Greek conceptions which have had their day are still current among us that we bleed to death over problems which otherwise would have no existence for us. How much we suffer from the one fact that to-day and for several centuries past our thoughts about religion have been under the hereditary foreign domination of Jewish transcendentalism and Greek metaphysics, and, instead of [pg 069] being able to express themselves naturally, have suffered continual distortion! Because ideas get worn out in this way, and in this condition hinder the thinking of later generations, there is no continuity in the spiritual progress of mankind, but only a confused succession of ups and downs. The threads get broken, or knotted, or lost, or when tied up again get tied wrongly. Hitherto it has been thought possible to interpret this up-and-down movement optimistically because it was universally held that the Renaissance and the age of the Illuminati were quite natural successors of the Greco-Roman civilization, and it was assumed further that, as a permanent result of this, renewed civilizations would spring up in the place of exhausted ones, and thus continual progress be assured. But this generalization cannot justifiably be drawn from such observations. It was because new peoples came on the scene, who had been only superficially touched by the decadent civilizations and now produced others of their own, that it was possible to see this succession of ups and downs ending in an ascent. As a matter of fact, however, our newer civilization was not in any organic connection with the Greco-Roman, even if it did take its first steps with the help of the crutches which the latter provided; it may be [pg 070] described more truly as the reaction of a healthy spirit against the worn out ideas which were thus offered to it. The essential element in the process was the contact of what was worn out with the fresh thought of young peoples.