be welcomed, and not disliking the world in which they found themselves even if it remained
unreformed. At other times they have been revolutionary, considering that radical alterations were
called for, but expecting that, partly as a result of their advocacy, these alterations would be
brought about in the near future. At yet other times they have despaired of the world, and felt that,
though they themselves knew what was needed, there was no hope of its being brought about.
This mood sinks easily into the deeper despair which regards life on earth as essentially bad, and
hopes for good only in a future life or in some mystical transfiguration.
In some ages, all these attitudes have been adopted by different men living at the same time.
Consider, for example, the early nineteenth century. Goethe is comfortable, Bentham is a
reformer, Shelley is a revolutionary, and Leopardi is a pessimist. But in most periods there has
been a prevailing tone among great writers. In England they were comfortable under Elizabeth and
in the eighteenth century; in France, they became revolutionary about 1750; in Germany, they
have been nationalistic since 1813.
During the period of ecclesiastical domination, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, there was a
certain conflict between what was theoretically believed and what was actually felt. Theoretically,
the world was a vale of tears, a preparation, amid tribulation, for the world to come. But in
practice the writers of books, being almost all clerics, could not help feeling exhilarated by the
power of the Church; they found opportunity for abundant activity of a sort that they believed to
be useful. They had therefore the mentality of a governing class, not of men who feel themselves
exiles in an alien world. This is part of the curious dualism that runs through the Middle Ages,
owing to the fact that the Church, though based on other-worldly beliefs, was the most important
institution in the every-day world.
The psychological preparation for the other-worldliness of Christianity begins in the Hellenistic
period, and is connected with the eclipse of the City State. Down to Aristotle, Greek philosophers,
though they might complain of this or that, were, in the main, not cosmically despairing, nor did
they feel themselves politically impotent. They might, at times, belong to a beaten party, but, if so,
their defeat was due to the chances of conflict, not to any inevitable powerlessness of the wise.
Even those who, like Pythagoras, and Plato