I voted Remain. I believe Leave is a mistake. But the UK is now in a new place. The ground has shifted. Or has it?

There are steadier links that haven’t changed. They are older than the EU. And they might assist us by reminding us of these islands’ happier roots in Europe. In fact, I’m beginning half to hope that the removal of the promise of cheaper German washing-machines and Spanish holidays could release us to want deeper connections: the cultural and spiritual wellsprings of our union.

Move in your mind to the other side of Europe, to the sunny eastern end of the blue Mediterranean, and think of one of the continent’s most successful creations: the Corinthian column. Invented in the 5^th century BC, in ancient Greece, no city or town is now complete without one. And they’re worth contemplating for the spirit they convey, something of the soul of Europe.

The capital – the top – of the Corinthian column features acanthus leaves springing up from a high votive basket. They stand for life pushing up from the soil. Hence, a Corinthian column does not support its load, like its Doric cousin, but elevates it. Think of the West End of St Paul’s cathedral: its portico does not rest on stone leaves, it floats above them, apparently lighter than air. Or think of Nelson on his column: he becomes god-like, lifted into a heavenly realm.

The Corinthian capital invites us to look up, to reach out, to grow. It speaks of virtue in action, not mere utility: nobility is the Corinthian capital of civil order, wrote Edmund Burke. The Corinthian column remembers that the best architecture is “frozen music”, not boxes in glass: its fluting holds an echo of the silent melody that the natural world conveys. Ancient Greece first invited us to strive for double vision, as possessed by William Blake, that “inward eye” which can feel the soul of life and politics, and help us contain edgy gut instincts.

Plato actually turned this aspiration for Europeans into an educational programme, championing the skills required not merely to survive but to flourish. He advocated it not only for freemen, as the Athenian democracy had assumed, but for women and slaves too. He initiated the long struggle that opened people’s minds to the spiritual worth of individuals, and how that matters more than birth or status.

England’s greatest son, Shakespeare, made Plato’s vocation his own. His history plays are meditations on the meaning of turbulent times. Remember Falstaff and Hal. I reckon Falstaff stands for the English soul when it loses its focus. Sack replaces spirit. “What is honour? a word… What is that honour? air,” Falstaff sneers. He is lost to distractions; fears for himself; celebrates by jeering.

Little wonder that Hal has to banish him to establish a kingdom of friendship. It’s a vision that moves England from the regimented feudalism of Richard II, with its gap between landed and poor, to the freedom of Henry V, in which “English may as French, French Englishmen, Receive each other.”

Higher vision always runs the risks of hubris, and nationalism. It’s no coincidence that Sisyphus was the first king of Corinth. The Epicurean philosopher, Lucretius, depicts him as the political type who, desiring power for power’s sake, is fated to meaningless victories and defeats – a lifetime rolling the boulder again to the top of the hill.

But another English Platonist, Thomas Traherne, understood that the European experiment in vision will not, finally, let us down – and he lived through the blood-letting of the English civil war. What he realised is that fulfillment doesn’t originate in economics. Happiness doesn’t necessarily follow institutional union. Rather, liberation comes when we act as if our souls see “The very brightness of Eternity; For Man to Act even in the Wilderness, As if he did those Sovereign Joys possess.”

Only those joys offer us personal sovereignty, because they link us to the place that’s truly our home. Such is the indigenous spirituality of Europe. It belongs to no-one, and is ours each to know. Like the acanthus leaves, it springs up from the ground of our being, and draws us towards a more subtle union.