From this policy of despair, this helplessness to cope with evil, and this hopelessness of good on earth, emerged a new and nobler synthesis, the merit of which belongs in no small measure to the Teutonic converts to the Christian faith. The Middle Ages proclaimed, through chivalry, the truth, then for the first time fully apprehended, that woman is the mediating and ennobling element in human life. Not in escape into the cloister, not in the self-abandonment to vice, but in the fellow-service of free men and women must be found the solution of social problems. The mythology of Mary gave religious sanction to the chivalrous enthusiasm; and a cult of woman sprang into being, to which, although it was romantic and visionary, we owe the spiritual basis of our domestic and civil life. The modus vivendi of the modern world was found.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Compare the fine rhetorical passage in Max. Tyr., Dissert., xxiv. 8, ed. Didot, 1842.
[2] i. 135.
[3] Numerous localities, however, claimed this distinction. See Ath., xiii. 601. Chalkis in Eubœa, as well as Crete, could show the sacred spot where the mystical assumption of Ganymede was reported to have happened.
[4] Laws, i. 636. Cp. Timæus, quoted by Ath., p. 602. Servius, ad Aen. x, 325, says that boy-love spread from Crete to Sparta, and thence through Hellas, and Strabo mentions its prevalence among the Cretans (x. 483). Plato (Rep. v. 452) speaks of the Cretans as introducing naked athletic sports.
[5] Laws, viii. 863.
[6] See Ath., xiii. 602. Plutarch, in the Life of Pelopidas (Clough, vol. ii. p. 219), argues against this view.
[7] See Rosenbaum, Lustseuche im Alterthume, p. 118.