HISTORY OF ART : THE MIDDLE AGES ART

While distant Chinese civilization delays the hour of his death by turning to its own past, while India spreads a religion over Asia to relieve its fever, the shadows are gradually drowning the shores where passed the brilliant and virile youth of the Western world. The ebbs and flows, since the beginning of history, have swayed the ocean from the peoples of the plateau of Iran to the cool and healthy lands that look out to the Atlantic. Silent invasions have accumulated in the plains of northern Europe the reserves of men who will renew the innocence of southern peoples when too irritating contact with Asia weakens their faith in their own intelligence. We have seen the Phoenicians bring to Greece and Italy, with the science and the ideal of Chaldea and Egypt, the Indian echo of the mystical intoxications
through which the holy thrill of universal life entered into western order. We have seen Greece, dragged by Alexander, deposit in the troubled and weary soul of India, the inspiring spark. Rome must in turn endure the sensualism of Asia when it brings it peace … The movement gradually exhausted its rhythm. It was necessary that a great rest should succeed the expenditure of energy from which the future of the world emerged, and that the nature of man folded in on itself to impose on his too tense mind, on his senses perverted, forgetting their conquests and the desire to go back to their natural sources.