Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/52

Counter-Currents also compensations for courage. What Mr. Murray calls a "failure of nerve" in Greek philosophy and Greek religion is the relaxing of effort, the letting down of obligation. With the asceticism imposed, or at least induced, by Christianity, "the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live in what survives the more completely," he has but scant and narrow sympathy; but he explains with characteristic clearness that the ideals of Greek citizenship withered and died, because of a weakening of faith in normal human resistance. "All the last manifestations of Hellenistic religion betray a lack of nerve."

It is with the best intentions in the world that we Americans are now engaged in letting down the walls of human resistance, in lessening personal obligation; and already the failure of nerve is apparent on every side. We begin our kindly ministrations with the little kindergarten scholar, to whom work 36