I might have been less digressive, but I
hope that two reasons will justify my prolixity; the first is the great
importance of the subject from the point of view of a history of
civilisation, and the second and more particular one is its close inner
relationship to my principal theme. For, in complete contrast with the
sexuality on which heretofore the relationship between husband and wife
had been based, a new feeling, that of spiritual love, had come into
existence and quickly reached its climax. Projected not only on the
other sex, but also on God and on nature, it permeated the age and
explains its great and unprecedented manifestations: the spiritual love
between man and woman (which deteriorated later on into the deification
of woman), the new religion of the German mystics, the awakening
appreciation of the beauty of nature, the sudden outburst of German
poetry--no sooner born than it reached perfection--the specifically
European Gothic architecture, so completely independent of the old art.
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