Religious Ideas of the primitive Europeans.—The Form of their Variations is determined by the Influence of Rome.—Necessity of Roman History in these Investigations.
Rise and Development of Roman Power, its successive Phases, territorial Acquisitions.—Becomes Supreme in the Mediterranean.—Consequent Demoralization of Italy.—Irresistible Concentration of Power.—Development of Imperialism.—Eventual Extinction of the true Roman Race.
Effect on the intellectual, religious, and social Condition of the Mediterranean Countries.—Produces homogeneous Thought.—Imperialism prepares the Way for Monotheism.—Momentous Transition of the Roman World in its religious Ideas.
Opinions of the Roman Philosophers.—Coalescence of the new and old Ideas.—Seizure of Power by the Illiterate, and consequent Debasement of Christianity in Rome.
Transition from Greece to Europe.
From the exposition of the intellectual progress of Greece given in the preceding pages, we now turn, agreeably to the plan laid down, to an examination of that of all Europe. The movement in that single nation is typical of the movement of the entire continent.
European age of Inquiry.
The first European intellectual age—that of Credulity—has already, in part, been considered in Chapter II., more especially so far as Greece is concerned. I propose now, after some necessary remarks in conclusion of that topic, to enter on the description of the second European age—that of Inquiry.
For these remarks, what has already been said of Greece prepares the way. Mediterranean Europe was philosophically and socially in advance of the central and northern countries. The wave of civilization passed from the south to the north; in truth, it has hardly yet reached its extreme limit. The adventurous emigrants who in remote times had come from Asia left to the successive generations of their descendants a legacy of hardship. In the struggle for life, all memory of an Oriental parentage was lost; knowledge died away; religious ideas became debased; and the diverse populations sank into the same intellectual condition that they would have presented had they been proper autochthons of the soil.
Religion of the old Europeans.