The body must
be hated, so that the soul could flourish. But as the Hellenic period
was preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the
impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of
Christianity matured the individual soul. It found its climax in Dante
and Eckhart, the greatest poet of the Neo-Latin race, and the most
illumined religious genius of Germany. These two men, who were
contemporaries (Dante died in 1321 and Eckhart in 1329), finally
revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and
fructifying each other. In Dante the great artistic power of the
Neo-Latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it
took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty
into the traditional myths of Christendom. Eckhart experienced and
recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending
of the soul with God. With these two men Europe definitely severed
herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star.
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