It  should be noted  that  Christianity arrived when paganism was already in decline and was struggling against the light of reason. It was still practiced in form, but faith in it had disappeared and only personal interests sustained it. As we know, interest is tenacious; it never yields to the evidence; it becomes angrier as the reasons that oppose it become more peremptory and better demonstrate its error. It knows very well that it is in error, but that does not bother it because true faith does not dwell in its soul. What interest fears most is the light that opens the eyes of the blind. The error is advantageous to it, so it holds onto and defends it.

Did not Socrates also teach a doctrine analogous to a certain degree to that of Christ? Why then did it not prevail in the midst of one of the most intelligent cultures on earth at the time? Because its time had not yet come. Socrates sowed on unplowed ground; paganism was not yet worn out. Christ received his providential mission at the proper time. Not all the people of his time – far from it – were up to the level of Christian ideas, but there was a more widespread aptitude for assimilating them due to the beginning of a sense of emptiness that popular beliefs left in the soul. Socrates and Plato had opened the way and had predisposed their spirits.