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 only for a very brief period sinks nearest to a complete torpor ; but still a com- parison with its past greatness will show that the decadence was marked and pro- gressive, Secondly, there is a rapid cessa- tion of the old free intellectual activity, a slumber of the scientific and the critical mind as well as the creative intuition ; what remains becomes more and more a repetition of ill-understood fragments of past knowledge. There is a petrification of the mind and life in the relics of the forms which a great intellectual past had created. Old authority and rule become rigidly despotic and, as always then hap- pens, lose their real sense and spirit. Finally, spirituality remains but burns no longer with the large and dear flame of knowledge of former times, but in in- tense jets and in a dispersed action which replaces the old magnificent synthesis and in which certain spiritual truths are em- phasised to the neglect of others. This diminution amounts to a certain failure of