m.
Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by
the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the
outer world which the physical sciences and useful arts communicate,
without the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, without the
traditions of a civilized past, emerging slowly from a state of utter
rawness, each nation could barely do more than gain and keep a difficult
hold upon existence. To depreciate the work achieved for humanity during
the Middle Ages would be ridiculous. Yet we may point out that it was
done unconsciously--that it was a gradual and instinctive process of
becoming. The reason, in a word, was not awake; the mind of man was
ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to
think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated
sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole
systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles
more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at
Constantinople and at Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle
were alive, but sleeping, awaiting only the call of the Renaissance to
bid them speak with voice intelligible to the modern mind. It is no less
pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from
all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the
shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the chance of
seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshipping the sepulchre whence Christ
had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the
sacred earth, while all the time, within their breasts and brains, the
spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized, the spirit of
freedom which ere long was destined to restore its birthright to the
world.

Meanwhile the Middle Age accomplished its own work. Slowly and
obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations
and the languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took
shape. The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters,
and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed.
The qualities which render modern society different from that of the
ancient world were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity,
by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then came a further
phase. After the nations had been moulded, their monarchies a