The Asian conquests brought again inroads of Asian thought; more particularly the thought of that small tribe, the quintessential of Semitism, which was ever engaged in revolt against nature, and maintaining democratic convictions in the teeth of all experience. Impatient of rulers, but submissive to those who scourged the impulses of their appetites. Scornful of kings, and turning from beauty and genius to exalt the insane and insect-ridden fakir with knotted unshorn locks who muttered vague prophecies. Struggling always to escape from the grip of the inevitable cruelties of natural forces by opposing to them bloody sacrifices and cruel self-restraints--flowering at last into that supreme incarnation of the Semitic mind called Jesus Christ, who wrested from asceticism a dream of a panacea for the brutalities of the laws of life. The misshapen and undeveloped fruit of the tree of existence, the windfalls--always a vast majority--received with ecstasy this new gospel, absurd but fascinating, which denied actualities and promised impossibilities. The feeble majority clutched at a power denied them by nature, and only by outwardly accepting the new tenets were the strong few able to maintain their old dominance.
Nietsche's "blond savage" pouring in from the north found Rome disintegrated by this Asian influence, and unable to discern that the new faith was not an integral part of the civilization whose splendour dazzled him, accepted this theory of life as part of the lesson he set himself humbly to learn at the feet of Italy.
Hence followed that blind welter of mediævalism; the material genius of the European race struggling in the bonds of a creed entirely foreign and unsympathetic. The strong still ruled, as always, but ruled by new formulæ, and moistened with blood and kneaded by swords the hard paste of the European Aryan was leavened by Semitism. Not willingly; never entirely. A thousand years after Rome's acceptance of the new cult the re-discovery of the old art and philosophy of Greece intoxicated Europe with joy. Here was something of her own--natural to her--sympathetic. The Renaissance became an ecstasy of negation of the heavy yoke under which her neck had so long been bowed. Learning again was glorious. The philosopher dared assert his superiority to dirty, ignorant scions of the gutter, who had claimed equality with sovereigns by reason of not eating three meals a day, and because of the virtue which lay in the frequent recitation of gibberish. Art abandoned its endless repetitions of a single theme, and essayed in faltering delight to rival the glorious fragments of those who had made nature their model and had joyed to picture life in all its rich grace and charm. The Western world stood once more upon its feet and burst into a rapture of creation. It laughed to scorn the narrow commands of Semitic asceticism against the graven image. Once more it allowed the beauty of visible nature to pour through its veins in a rich, fecundating flood.