"The primitive creative epoch in the history of Christianity was followed in the Middle Ages by a period especially characterized by the evolution of the consciousness of opposition between God and the world, priests and laity, church and state, and, in general, between the human spirit, on the one hand, and God, the human spirit itself and nature, on the other, and hence by the evolution of the sense of the limitation and bondage of man. The period of Modern Times, on the contrary, is marked, in the main, by the development of the consciousness of restored unity, and hence of the reconciliation and freedom of the human spirit. In the patristic period, philosophic thought stands in the closest union with theological speculation, and co-operates in the development of Christian dogma. In the Scholastic period it passes into the service of theology, being employed merely to reduce to scientific form a body of dogmatic teaching for the most part already at hand, by introducing a logical arrangement and bringing to its support philosophical doctrines from ante-Christian antiquity. In Modern Philosophy it gradually acquires, with reference to Christian theology and ancient philosophy, the character of an independent science as regards both form and content."