ecially the Middle Ages, then most distant of all, intelligible
and acceptable to a society issuing from the eighteenth century.
There were difficulties in the way; and among others this, that,
in the first fervour of the Crusades, the men who took the Cross,
after receiving communion, heartily devoted the day to the
extermination of Jews. To judge them by a fixed standard, to call
them sacrilegious fanatics or furious hypocrites, was to yield
a gratuitous victory to Voltaire. It became a rule of policy
to praise the spirit when you could not defend the deed. So that
we have no common code; our moral notions are always fluid;
and you must consider the times, the class from which men sprang,
the surrounding influences, the masters in their schools,
the preachers in their pulpits, the movement they obscurely obeyed,
and so on, until responsibility is merged in numbers, and not
a culprit is left for execution #92. A murderer was no criminal
if he followed local custom, if neighbours approved, if he was
encouraged by official advisers or prompted by just authority,
if he acted for the reason of state or the pure love of religion,
or if he sheltered himself behind the complicity of the Law.
The depression of morality was flagrant; but the motives were
those which have enabled us to contemplate with distressing
complacency the secret of unhallowed lives. The code that is
greatly modified by time and place, will vary according to the
cause. The amnesty is an artifice that enables us to make
exceptions, to tamper with weights and measures, to deal unequal
justice to friends and enemies.

It is associated with that philosophy which Cato attributes to
the gods. For we have a theory which justifies Providence by the
event, and holds nothing so deserving as success, to which there
can be no victory in a bad cause; prescription and duration
legitimate #93; and whatever exists is right and reasonable; and as
God manifests His will by that which He tolerates, we must
conform to the divine decree by living to shape the future after
the ratified image of the past #94. Another theory, less confidently
urged, regards History as our guide, as much by showing errors to
evade as examples to pursue. It is suspicious of illusions in
success, and, though there may be hope of ultimate triumph for
what is true, if not by its own attraction, by the gradual
exhaustion of error, it admits no corresponding promise for what
is ethically ri