IMMUNITY, MORTALITY, AND PRECOCITY 163
nian resuscitations of an Hellenic universal state from the incubus which
had been imposed on the Orthodox Christian Society at the dawn of its
history by the disastrous efRcacity of Leo Syrus's resuscitation of this
oecumenical Hellenic political spectre. A similar comparison between
the fortunes of two other sister societies likewise indicated that the
Japanese offshoot of a Buddhistic Far Eastern Society had been more
fortunate than the main body of the same society in China hi being saved
by the collapse of a pseudo-T'ang regime in Yamato from the doom which
the disastrous efficacity of the T'ang regime itself had eventually brought
upon China.

In this connexion we may also notice that even a quasi-immunity is
rewarded by a modicum of beatitude. The partial successes of a Maha-
yanian Buddhist theology in foiling the renaissance of a Confucian Sinic
philosophy in the Far East, and of a Syrian Dynasty's Christian legisla-
tion in foiling a Macedonian Dynasty's renaissance of a Justinianean
Hellenic law in Orthodox Christendom, had, as we have seen, the auspi-
cious effect of attenuating the untoward consequences of these two
renaissances for the societies that had done their worst to evoke them.

The imtowardness of precocity is likewise illustrated by synoptic
views that have already come under our eyes.

For example, in the field of Language and Literature, where the
negative or positive value of a renaissance of dead classics can be
measured by the blight or stimulus of its influence on the creation of a
literature in living vernacular languages, we can see that the effective
renaissance of Hellenism in a Greek Orthodox Christendom as early as
the ninth century of the Christian Era, less than two hundred years after
the emergence of an infant Orthodox Christian Civilization out of a
post-Hellenic interregnum, was far more noxious than the effective
renaissance of the same Hellenism in the fifteenth century in a Western
World which had enjoyed a six hundred years longer immunity from the
haunting presence of this Hellenic ghost, thanks to a Carolingian re-
naissance's fortunate failure. We can also see that, when a Modern
Greek people conjured up a ghost of the Attic Greek language at the
very moment of its entry as a proselyte into a Western Society's gates,
the chimaera of a 'purist' Greek language (-f) KaOapevovcra), with which it
saddled itself in the act, was a still more grievous incubus than an Anna
Comnena's' Attic Kowrj or even than a Nicholas Khalkokondh^lis'
pseudo-Hero dotean Ionic.

In the field of Religion, where the negative or positive value of a re-
naissance can be measured by its influence in hindering or helping the
Soul in its perennial struggle with the sin of Idolatry, we can see that
an effective renaissance of a Judaic Aniconism in a Greek Orthodox
Christendom as early as the eighth century of the Christian Era par-
tially cured an infant Orthodox Christian Church of image-worship at
the cost of committing an Orthodox Christian Society to the likewise
idolatrous worship of a ghost of an Hellenic universal state, whereas
the renaissance of the same Judaic Aniconism in Western Christen-
dom some eight hundred years later wholly cured a Protestant Western
Church of image-worship—though this at the cost of helping to commit