Yet, for lack of some
sufficiently powerful element of restraint and some sufficiently daring
faith in spiritual reality, Hellenism sank back upon the mere earth, and
its dying fires lit up a world too sordid for their sacred flame. In
_Marius the Epicurean_ the one thing lacking was supplied by the faith
of early Christianity. The Greek idealism of beauty was not only
conserved but enriched, and the human spirit was revived, by that heroic
faith which endured as seeing the invisible. The two _Fausts_ revealed
the struggle at later stages of the development of Christianity.
Marlowe's showed it under the light of mediaeval theology and Goethe's
under that of modern humanism, with the curious result that in the
former tragedy the man is the pagan and the devil the idealist, while in
the latter this order is reversed. Omar Khayyam and Fiona Macleod
introduce the Oriental and the Celtic strains. In both there is the cry
of the senses and the strong desire and allurement of the green earth;
but in Fiona Macleod there is the dominant undertone of the eternal and
the spiritual, never silent and finally overwhelming.
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