For by this means the Greeks--to whom our present remarks apply especially and pre-eminently--gained free space for the unshackled development of a philosophy which, though it may have run and wandered through many systems of error, yet in so far as it was an honest and sincere search after truth and certainty, served and deserves to be considered as a preparation and introduction to a higher knowledge and the adoption of revelation. For because of this intellectual development (and the fact serves to prove that a pure sensibility to the beautiful, and a clear and pregnant thought on human life and on nature, is ever highly pleasing to God), the Greeks were chosen as the second people of the world, to be the medium and the instruments of the further diffusion of revelation in the course of the development of humanity. In political life, the erroneous tendency of the Greek mind was to the abuse of liberty and to anarchy. When this evil had been carried to its wildest extreme, it was overtaken by its natural penalty (which inwardly follows close upon its track), in the armed supremacy of Macedon (which, however, was only a brief paroxysm), and the final subjugation of Greece to the Roman yoke. Among the Romans both forms of political evil met together, and were closely connected with each other. To escape from domestic anarchy, they entered on a victorious career of foreign conquest and aggrandizement; and when intestine dissension had reached its greatest height, a perfect despotism was established, both at home and in the provinces.