In the
same way the old pagan republican feeling was much more dead in the
feudal darkness of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, than it was even a
century later; but if creative politics were at their lowest, creative
theology was almost at its highest point of energy.
The modern world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen
between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the
cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediaeval stool
that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the
two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that
bound men; but, then, neither could it believe in the men they bound. It
was always restrained in its hatred of slavery by a half remembrance of
its yet greater hatred of liberty. They were almost alone, I think, in
thus carrying to its extreme the negative attitude already noted in Miss
Arabella Allen. Anselm would have despised a civic crown, but he would
not have despised a relic. Voltaire would have despised a relic; but he
would not have despised a vote. We hardly find them both despised till
we come to the age of Oscar Wilde.
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