But now, in the very center of man’s history--in the transition-point between the ancient and the modern world--science and life were again at unison, as at the beginning. And this was effected by the appearance of a new science in another form. For most assuredly we shall not err in giving this name to a new living and spiritual power, which, totally changing and giving an entirely new direction to the arbitrary views, sentiments, and principles of public and private life, and also to the modes of thinking prevalent in the age and in the world, was strong enough to triumph, not only over heathenism itself, but also over the science and philosophy of its most enlightened nations. Now this new mode of thinking, which came forward in the full certainty of the most undoubting faith and the highest internal illumination, had, so far as it is right and allowable to call it a science, a very different form and scope from all that has previously and usually been so called. For it issued out of the very depths of life, and received from love--a divine love, that is--its first diffusion and establishment. Consequently, it was a thoroughly living science, or, as being perfectly clear and certain in itself, a new scientific life, which, moreover, proceeded from this its first starting-point, was able to penetrate into all the other forms of public life and of the anterior systems of science, and by adopting or remodeling them, give to itself therein a further and more universal development. But here, also, the divine impulse from above encountered the usual partial or entire resistance from below. Accordingly, this new living wisdom, which, in its essence, is one with life, and which, therefore, the more it is developed only unfolds this unity the more universally and the more immutably, was not, at the first, universally adopted, or did not become every where predominant. Moreover, even where it was received, and its authority acknowledged, its reception was often little more than external. It was not admitted as a living principle into all the depths of the soul, or impressed on all the habits and tendencies of the mind [_geist_]. And even where, in some degree at least, it was adopted in the inner man with full and sincere love, it was often nothing more than an undeveloped germ of the future and of a higher life. Isolated by itself, and standing apart, it remained shut up within the inmost bosom, without at the same time penetrating, reanimating, and giving a new life and shape to all the other life-elements of the consciousness and the productions of human science.