His instinctive need to worship had found
an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She
was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was
sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a
new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were
the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German
poet.
Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the
European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its
higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies
of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman
was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal
was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects.
Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the
headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a
member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that
his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period
when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern
men, but slightly differentiated.
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