Principles of western civilisation

216 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

Stoic to preserve the dignity and equilibrium of the Ego in relation to the surrounding world has absolutely vanished. The consuming desire to which the effort of the mind corresponds in the new movement is now seen to transcend all the ends in the present to which human consciousness is related. ‘My God, my life, my holy joy,” says St. Augustine, “what am I to Thee that Thou demandest love from me? . . . Hide not Thy face from me. Let me die (that I die not) that I may see Thy face.”?

As we continue to watch the inner life of the movement we see how the terms of the antithesis become gradually more and more clearly defined. The interesting and significant observation has been made that it was only during the early period of the new faith in Rome that the epithet ‘“ welldeserving,” which was a usual inscription on the tombs of the ancient Romans, continued to be an inscription in the Christian catacombs. The surviving influence which this indicated of one of the most fundamental ideas of the pagan world soon entirely disappeared. With the development of the Pelagian controversy we begin to realise how essential and inherent in the deeper life of the movement is the antithesis which has been opened in the human mind. The conception of the innate and utter insufficiency of the individual gradually becomes visible in all its strength, as with the banishment of Pelagius in 418, and his condemnation by the Council of Ephesus in 431, it bears down all opposition.” Where in the ancient world all virtue

1 Confessions, i. 2 Cf. History of the Later Roman Empire, by J. B. Bury, vol. I. ii. ix.