The struggle really ended, as almost all great conflicts end, in a compromise. There was apparently so complete a victory of the original communities and of the principles which they embodied, that their opponents seem to vanish from Christian literature and Christian history. It was in reality a victory in which the victors were the vanquished. There was so large an absorption by the original communities of the principles of their opponents as to destroy the main reason for a separate existence. The absorption was less of speculations than of the tendency to speculate. The residuum of permanent effect was mainly a certain habit of mind. This is at once a consequence and a proof of the general argument which has been advanced above, that certain elements of education in philosophy had been so widely diffused, and in the course of centuries had become so strongly rooted, as to have caused an instinctive tendency to throw ideas into a philosophical form, and to test assertions by philosophical canons. The existence of such a tendency is shown in the first instance by the mode in which the earliest “defenders of the faith” met their opponents; and the supposition that it was instinctive is a legitimate inference from the fact that it was unconscious. For Tatian,[226] though he ridicules Greek philosophy and professes to have abandoned it, yet builds up theories of the Logos, of free-will, and of the nature of spirit, out of the elements of current philosophical conceptions. Tertullian, though he asks,[227] “What resemblance is there between a philosopher and a Christian, between a disciple of Greece and a disciple of heaven?” expresses Christian truths in philosophical terms, and argues against his opponents—for example, against Marcion—by methods which might serve as typical examples of the current methods of controversy between philosophical schools. And Hippolytus,[228] though he reproves another Christian writer for listening to Gentile teaching, and so disobeying the injunction, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles,” is himself saturated with philosophical conceptions and philosophical literature. * * * * * The answer, in short, to the main question which has been before us is that Christianity came into a ground which was already prepared for it. Education was widely diffused over the Greek world, and among all classes of the community. It had not merely aroused the habit of inquiry which is the foundation of philosophy, but had also taught certain philosophical methods. Certain elements of the philosophical temper had come into existence on a large scale, penetrating all classes of society and inwrought into the general intellectual fibre of the time. They had produced a certain habit of mind. When, through the kinship of ideas, Christianity had been absorbed by the educated classes, the habit of mind which had preceded it remained and dominated. It showed itself mainly in three ways: