Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/49

 n] THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN 31 third century. It passed to Rome, and found many natures open to it among Hellenized Romans. The goal of Neo-platonism, like the yearning whence it sprang, was a state of metaphysical ultra-emotionalism. Might not this philosophy complement the human feelings which Virgil voiced and which touched Juvenal with a sense of teai-s ? Would not such a union make a great and complete personality? It was impossible. That final Virgilian compass of feel- ing was real love and pity. Neo-platonic ecstasy was dialectic mysticism, which had uncertain share in the hearths realities. Its higher modes scorned them, its low modes debased them. Virgilian feeling could not unite with such phantasy or such debasement. VirgiPs tenderness for all life might have made part with the Christian love of God. But, unhappily for this con- summation, the later pagan philosophy devitalized and mystified such love of God as paganism seemed to touch. And, on the other hand, there had come on Christianity a monastic asceticism which set on one side the love of God and against it, as a devil's snare, the love of all things human. The round of noble human feeling could not include itself under such love of God, any more than it could unite with the Neo- platonic ecstasy. The apparent portentous fact was this: with the Augustan era the final catholic development of the Hellenized Latin man was reached. The elements of the pagan personality might severally make some special advance. There might be a weary, but com- plete, reliance on reason in Marcus Aurelius, a con- scious sense of pity in Juvenal, a general kindliness