Christianity tore the spirit from this world; and worldly reality, rendered foreign, mute, lifeless, external, material — such reality became the object of Western science.

In contrast, in the pagan world, nature was harmony, a living body permeated by the spirit, transparent with gods, meanings, and symbols; it was an adorable organism whose beauty artists celebrated, and whose deep laws initiates penetrated with an untainted eye. In an organic, essential, living connection, man had the sense of being “a whole within the whole,” according to the saying of Hermes.

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