Note 291 — Chapter IX · REFLECTIONS ON THE FOREGOING

One of the chief factors in assisting the Promethean type to attain to supremacy in Europe during the last 2,000 years has been, of course, the ascendancy of Christian values. Provided a man, woman or child has faith, and earnestly strives to have a pure soul, Christianity takes no notices of their bodies. Neither does Christianity present any check to the marriage and multiplication of undesirable people. In fact, it resembles Prometheanism in this, that it takes no cognisance of æsthetic-survival-values. Christianity (not of the Protestant brand), however, does allow of certain Dionysian principles. It was the Church, for instance, that throughout the Middle Ages spread the culture of the vine, and the drinking of wine, all over heathen Europe. The gardens around monasteries produced the first vineyards in a very large number of localities.