Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... I RELIGION AND CIVILISATION* That the relationship between religion and civilisation involves many complications, is indicated, in the first place, by the manifold changes which it has undergone in the course of history. Even in the antique world, especially in its later days, this relationship was no simple matter; but it was upon Christian soil that the problem first developed its fullest intensity. From the very earliest times, men have been divided npon this matter: while some valued civilisation and culture, and particularly philosophy, as a preliminary and preparatory stage of divine truth, others were dominated by the idea of the opposition between religion and civilisation, and not infrequently uttered pointed expressions of indifference towards, or even of hatred of civilisation. The first broad solution was that attempted by St. Augustine, who created an all-embracing system of life, which, while leaving room for the work of civilisation, assigned no other task to its entire extent than that of leading man, through all his occupation with the multiplicity of things, and above and beyond this, to the alldominating unity, the vision of which alone promises certain truth and blessed peace as compared with all the uncertainty and trouble of the rest of life. All the different spheres of spiritual life thus received an immense inspiration and consolidation; but the details of their construction became matters of indifference, and there was a disappearance of all independence and self-value on the part of objective work. The latter found more recognition in the calmer but more superficial mode * From Religion und Qtiateskultur, 1906; I. of thought of scholasticism at the height of the Middle Ages. For although in this case, too, ..
