It is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a system. A reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders still falls on their disciples: Follow me! But the second generation already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn up and looked upon as sacred--religion has become a glimpse into the past. Most people never have any direct religious experience, their salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. The founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of necessity. Arnold of Brescia died at the stake; St. Francis was no more than a heretic tolerated by the Church, and Eckhart escaped the tribunal of the Inquisition only through his death. I have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and psychical life, how powerfully _the Christian principle of the individual soul, the real fundamental value of the European civilisation_, manifested itself at the time of the Crusades, and everywhere became the germ of new things. The deepest thinkers teach the deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position, which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy. Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its emotional content something else--whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or naturalism--will always remain a failure. Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul, nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a hermit's life in the desert, for instance. Children left their parents, husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. The first convents--the outcome of Christian individualism and asceticism--were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate against the monastic life.