dark ages

• European dark ages › slavery virtually disappeared during

69:8.7The in­sti­tu­tion of slav­ery com­pelled man to in­vent the reg­u­la­tive mech­a­nism of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety; it gave ori­gin to the be­gin­nings of gov­ern­ment. Slav­ery de­mands strong reg­u­la­tion and dur­ing the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages vir­tu­ally dis­ap­peared be­cause the feu­dal lords could not con­trol the slaves. The back­ward tribes of an­cient times, like the na­tive Aus­tralians of to­day, never had slaves.

• European dark ages › few human rights recognized in

70:9.15Few hu­man rights were rec­og­nized in the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages; then ev­ery man be­longed to some­one else, and rights were only priv­i­leges or fa­vors granted by state or church. And the re­volt from this er­ror was equally er­ro­neous in that it led to the be­lief that all men are born equal.

• European dark ages › reversion to small castle groups during

71:1.24Fail­ure of state in­te­gra­tion re­sults in ret­ro­gres­sion to pre­state con­di­tions of gov­ern­men­tal tech­niques, such as the feu­dal­ism of the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages. Dur­ing these dark ages the ter­ri­to­rial state col­lapsed, and there was a re­ver­sion to the small cas­tle groups, the reap­pear­ance of the clan and tribal stages of de­vel­op­ment. Sim­i­lar semi­states even now ex­ist in Asia and Africa, but not all of them are evo­lu­tion­ary re­ver­sions; many are the em­bry­onic nu­cle­uses of states of the fu­ture.

• China from decline of Taoism to coming of Buddhism

94:6.12Like many other spir­i­tual and moral teach­ers, both Con­fu­cius and Lao-tse were even­tu­ally de­i­fied by their fol­low­ers in those spir­i­tu­ally dark ages of China which in­ter­vened be­tween the de­cline and per­ver­sion of the Taoist faith and the com­ing of the Bud­dhist mis­sion­ar­ies from In­dia. Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally deca­dent cen­turies the re­li­gion of the yel­low race de­gen­er­ated into a piti­ful the­ol­ogy wherein swarmed dev­ils, drag­ons, and evil spir­its, all be­to­ken­ing the re­turn­ing fears of the un­en­light­ened mor­tal mind. And China, once at the head of hu­man so­ci­ety be­cause of an ad­vanced re­li­gion, then fell be­hind be­cause of tem­po­rary fail­ure to pro­gress in the true path of the de­vel­op­ment of that God-con­scious­ness which is in­dis­pens­able to the true prog­ress, not only of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal, but also of the in­tri­cate and com­plex civ­i­liza­tions which char­ac­ter­ize the ad­vance of cul­ture and so­ci­ety on an evo­lu­tion­ary planet of time and space.

• inexorable restoration of imbalance between self-liberty and self-control

118:8.6The slow­ness of evo­lu­tion, of hu­man cul­tural prog­ress, tes­ti­fies to the ef­fec­tive­ness of that brake—ma­te­rial in­er­tia—which so ef­fi­ciently op­er­ates to re­tard dan­ger­ous ve­loc­i­ties of prog­ress. Thus does time it­self cush­ion and dis­tribute the oth­er­wise lethal re­sults of pre­ma­ture es­cape from the next-en­com­pass­ing bar­ri­ers to hu­man ac­tion. For when cul­ture ad­vances over­fast, when ma­te­rial achieve­ment out­runs the evo­lu­tion of wor­ship-wis­dom, then does civ­i­liza­tion con­tain within it­self the seeds of ret­ro­gres­sion; and un­less but­tressed by the swift aug­men­ta­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom, such hu­man so­ci­eties will re­cede from high but pre­ma­ture lev­els of at­tain­ment, and the “dark ages” of the in­ter­reg­num of wis­dom will bear wit­ness to the in­ex­orable restora­tion of the im­bal­ance be­tween self-lib­erty and self-con­trol.

195:4.1The church, be­ing an ad­junct to so­ci­ety and the ally of pol­i­tics, was doomed to share in the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­cline of the so-called Eu­ro­pean “dark ages.” Dur­ing this time, re­li­gion be­came more and more monas­ti­cized, as­ceti­cized, and le­gal­ized. In a spir­i­tual sense, Chris­tian­ity was hi­ber­nat­ing. Through­out this pe­riod there ex­isted, along­side this slum­ber­ing and sec­u­lar­ized re­li­gion, a con­tin­u­ous stream of mys­ti­cism, a fan­tas­tic spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence bor­der­ing on un­re­al­ity and phil­o­soph­i­cally akin to pan­the­ism.

195:4.2Dur­ing these dark and de­spair­ing cen­turies, re­li­gion be­came vir­tu­ally sec­ond­handed again. The in­di­vid­ual was al­most lost be­fore the over­shad­ow­ing au­thor­ity, tra­di­tion, and dic­ta­tion of the church. A new spir­i­tual men­ace arose in the cre­ation of a galaxy of “saints” who were as­sumed to have spe­cial in­flu­ence at the di­vine courts, and who, there­fore, if ef­fec­tively ap­pealed to, would be able to in­ter­cede in man’s be­half be­fore the Gods.

195:4.3But Chris­tian­ity was suf­fi­ciently so­cial­ized and pa­ganized that, while it was im­po­tent to stay the on­com­ing dark ages, it was the bet­ter pre­pared to sur­vive this long pe­riod of moral dark­ness and spir­i­tual stag­na­tion. And it did per­sist on through the long night of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and was still func­tion­ing as a moral in­flu­ence in the world when the re­nais­sance dawned. The re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Chris­tian­ity, fol­low­ing the pass­ing of the dark ages, re­sulted in bring­ing into ex­is­tence nu­mer­ous sects of the Chris­tian teach­ings, be­liefs suited to spe­cial in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual types of hu­man per­son­al­ity. And many of these spe­cial Chris­tian groups, or re­li­gious fam­i­lies, still per­sist at the time of the mak­ing of this pre­sen­ta­tion.

195:4.4Chris­tian­ity ex­hibits a his­tory of hav­ing orig­i­nated out of the un­in­tended trans­for­ma­tion of the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a re­li­gion about Je­sus. It fur­ther pre­sents the his­tory of hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced Hel­l­eniza­tion, pa­gani­za­tion, sec­u­lar­iza­tion, in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion, in­tel­lec­tual de­te­ri­o­ra­tion, spir­i­tual deca­dence, moral hi­ber­na­tion, threat­ened ex­tinc­tion, later re­ju­ve­na­tion, frag­men­ta­tion, and more re­cent rel­a­tive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Such a pedi­gree is in­dica­tive of in­her­ent vi­tal­ity and the pos­ses­sion of vast re­cu­per­a­tive re­sources. And this same Chris­tian­ity is now pres­ent in the civ­i­lized world of Oc­ci­den­tal peo­ples and stands face to face with a strug­gle for ex­is­tence which is even more omi­nous than those event­ful crises which have char­ac­ter­ized its past bat­tles for dom­i­nance.

195:4.5Re­li­gion is now con­fronted by the chal­lenge of a new age of sci­en­tific minds and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies. In this gi­gan­tic strug­gle be­tween the sec­u­lar and the spir­i­tual, the re­li­gion of Je­sus will even­tu­ally tri­umph.

• European dark ages › Christianity comatose for 1000 years

195:10.18Chris­tian­ity is an ex­tem­po­rized re­li­gion, and there­fore must it op­er­ate in low gear. High-gear spir­i­tual per­for­mances must await the new rev­e­la­tion and the more gen­eral ac­cep­tance of the real re­li­gion of Je­sus. But Chris­tian­ity is a mighty re­li­gion, see­ing that the com­mon­place dis­ci­ples of a cru­ci­fied car­pen­ter set in mo­tion those teach­ings which con­quered the Ro­man world in three hun­dred years and then went on to tri­umph over the bar­bar­ians who over­threw Rome. This same Chris­tian­ity con­quered—ab­sorbed and ex­alted—the whole stream of He­brew the­ol­ogy and Greek phi­los­o­phy. And then, when this Chris­tian re­li­gion be­came co­matose for more than a thou­sand years as a re­sult of an over­dose of mys­ter­ies and pa­gan­ism, it res­ur­rected it­self and vir­tu­ally re­con­quered the whole West­ern world. Chris­tian­ity con­tains enough of Je­sus’ teach­ings to im­mor­tal­ize it.