Lecture II

Here is described, by one of the most eminent European minds of pre-Christian times, what were looked upon at that time as the most important qualities in human nature. Valour, bravery, is in the European population permeated by the Christ-impulse and by what we call “ I ” or the Ego. Bravery, which in Plato appears as virtue, is here spiritualised and thereby becomes “ love.” The most important thing is that we should see how, moral impulses come into the human race, how that which formerly existed in the form we have described becomes something entirely different. Now without disparagement to Christian morality we cannot describe as the only virtues, wisdom, temperance, valour and justice, for we might receive the reply: “ If you had all these and yet you had not love you would never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”