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I] INTRODUCTION 15 strength and the rational balancing of mortal consid- erations. It was a liberation resting upon the power of God. The human spirit, responding to the new Christ-awakened sense of the infinite and awful power of God^s love, became conscious of the measureless reaches of the soul created for eternal life by an infinite and eternally loving God. The soul was lifted out of its finitude to the infinite which is its nature and its home. This freeing of the human spirit will first appear in the modifications of the antique character and the disappearance of classic traits: the genius of Neo- platonism was beating against barriers which were burst through only by the Christian faith. Then this liberation will appear in the forms of decadence shown by pagan productions of the transition and pre-transi- tion periods; it not only accompanies but it will seem part of the decay suffered by the strong and noble qualities of classic antiquity. It will likewise appear, often grotesquely and irrationally, in the loos- ing of antique pagan thoughts from their rational form and definite application when taken over into Christian compositions. Protagoras, in saying that man was the measure of all things, enunciated what had been a tacit assumption in Greek life and reflec- tion since the time when Homer made the gods so human. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, had seen principles of human nature reflected in the laws of the universe, and Greek metaphysics never ceased to entertain thoughts of a cosmic harmony having its raicrocoemio pattern in the temperance and proportion that made the ideal of human conduct Manifestly,