151

With the advent of Christianity a religion attained the mastery which
corresponded to a pre-Greek condition of mankind: belief in witchcraft
in connection with all and everything, bloody sacrifices, superstitious
fear of demoniacal punishments, despair in one's self, ecstatic brooding
and hallucination, man's self become the arena of good and evil spirits
and their struggles.


152

All branches of history have experimented with antiquity · critical
consideration alone remains. By this term I do not mean conjectural and
literary-historical criticism.


153

Antiquity has been treated by all kinds of historians and their methods.
We have now had enough experience, however, to turn the history of
antiquity to account without being shipwrecked on antiquity itself.


154

We can now look back over a fairly long period of human existence · what
will the humanity be like which is able to look back at us from an