Always and everywhere, for the past eighteen hundred years, as soon as
these wings grow feeble or give way, public and private morals
degenerate. In Italy, during the Renaissance, in England under the
restoration, in France under the Convention and Directory, man becomes
as pagan as in the first century; the same causes render him the same
as in the times of Augustus and Tiberius, that is to say voluptuous
and cruel: he abuses himself and victimizes others; a brutal,
calculating egoism resumes its ascendancy, depravity and sensuality
spread, and society becomes a den of cut-throats and a brothel.[22]
After contemplating this spectacle near by, we can value the
contribution to modern societies of Christianity, how much modesty,
gentleness and humanity it has introduced into them, how it maintains
integrity, good faith and justice. Neither philosophic reason,
artistic or literary culture, or even feudal, military or chivalric
honor, nor any administration or government can replace it. There is
nothing else to restrain our natal bent, nothing to arrest the
insensible, steady, down-hill course of our species with the whole of
its original burden, ever retrograding towards the abyss.
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