But wherever peoples, faiths or arts decay, the decay of Love--this strong, energetic Love--has come first. The current frivolousness about intellectual matters, the philandering of the literary coquettes, springs simply from a lack of Love. For the great problems demand passion for their comprehension, and our intellectuals dislike passion. In politics and in religion it is the same: creative Love has everywhere disappeared to be replaced by barren Sympathy. But is it possible by preaching to increase Love? Can it be willed into power? Well, praise may call it forth. 147 _Love at the Renaissance_ How may a great creative age like the Renaissance be interpreted on the hypothesis of Love? Shall it yet be found that the mainspring of the Renaissance was a newly discovered love of Life and, therefore, of Man? In the Middle Ages that part of Life, then called God, had become isolated and abstract, and was worshipped to the detriment of all other Life; while Man was neglected where he was not belittled. Thus, a strong current of Man's love was diverted away from Man altogether, and the earth became dark and sterile. How was the earth to recapture its love again, and drink back into itself its rapture and creativeness? By a marriage in which God and the Universe were made one flesh; by the incorporation of God into Life, and, therefore, into Man. Hence arose the Pantheism of the Renaissance. To love Life with a good conscience, to love Life unconditionally, it was necessary to call Life God. Out of this Love sprang not only the art but the science of the Renaissance. For Man once more became interested in himself, and, from himself, in Life; ultimately discoveries were made and more than one New World was brought to light. Perhaps it is the defect of all theistic, objective theologies that they become, sooner or later, barren. Only by being translated into the subjective do they regain their creative power: Pantheism is the remedy for Theism. Yet to Theism we owe this, that it lent intensity and elevation to Love. The Love of the Pantheists of the Renaissance was not ordinary human Love; it united in a unique emotion the love that had formerly been given to Man along with that which had formerly been given to God. It loved Man as God should be loved--a dangerous thing. But out of this love of God in Man it created, nevertheless, something great, somewhat less than the one, somewhat more than the other--the demi-god. The Renaissance was the age of the demi-gods. 148 _Sympathy_ Sympathy is Love bereft of his bow and arrows--but still blind. 149 A Self-Evident Proposition This is certain, that God is Love. How, else, could He have created the Universe? 150 _"God is Love"_