This is the result, I think, of the way in which the Greeks interpreted the world. They conceived the world aesthetically, as a finite and harmonious cosmos. The most representative Hellenic thinkers conceived creation as something static, as a sort of classical contemplation of a well-ordered cosmos. This is true of all the great Greek philosophers, who could grasp neither the historical process nor that of historical fulfilment. To them history had no issue, no goal, no beginning even; in it everything was recurrent, eternally rotating and governed by a cyclic motion.

It is clear, I think, to any student of history that the Hellenic culture, world and consciousness were lacking in historical sense. They had no conception of history as fulfilling itself. … It was the Jews who contributed the concept of ‘historical’ to world history, thereby discharging, in my opinion, the essence of their specific mission. They were the first to conceive the world as historical fulfilment in contradistinction to the cyclic process of the Greeks.

For the Jews the idea of history turns upon die expectation of some future event which will bring with it a solution of history. … That was the Messianic idea peculiar to the Jewish people. It constitutes their specific contribution to the history of the human spirit.

Both the Hellenic and the Hebraic principle enter closely into the constitution of the European consciousness; their organic union in the Christian world had helped to inaugurate a new era.

The Aryan found it difficult to consider the idea of a historical destiny on earth. Their consciousness in this life was concerned with attaining to the contemplation of eternal life. To them the historical destiny of mankind appeared devoid of interest when compared with the contemplation of other spiritual worlds.