the generals, the legislators of Rome created by political means, by wars, treaties, laws, a grand economic and political unity, which they consolidated, quite giving up the formation of a large intellectual and moral unity. The intellectual men, who formed the most powerful nucleus of the Church after the fourth century, took up again the Roman idea of unity and of empire; but they transferred it from matter to mind, from the concrete world of economic and political interests, to the world of ideas and beliefs. They tried to re-do, by pen and word, the work of the Scipios, of Lucullus, and of Caesar, to conquer the world, not indeed invading it with armies, but spreading a new faith, creating a new morality, a new metaphysics which must gather up within themselves the intellectual activities of Graeco-Latin culture, from history to science, from law to philosophy.
The Church of the Middle Ages was therefore the most splendid edifice that the intellectual classes have so far created. The power of this empire of men of letters increased, as little by little the other empire, that of the generals and diplomats, declined. Christianity saw with indifference the Roman Empire decay; indeed, when it could, it helped on the disintegration and was
