ehended the great changes both in the form and in the temper of that
world. And yet the varieties, the changes, are very diverse, the
outlook, the artistic methods of the Homeric poetry are very different
from the emotional and intellectual modernity of Euripides. The
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle is very different from that of the
Stoics and Neoplatonists. In that picturesque but perhaps not very
felicitous phrase which Mr. Murray has borrowed from Mr. Cornford, there
was a 'failure of nerve' which separates the earlier from the later
stages of the moral and intellectual culture of the ancient world.
However this may be, and we shall have more to say about this presently,
the civilization of the Middle Ages was made up on the one hand of
elements drawn from the later Empire, and on the other of
characteristics and principles which seem to have belonged to the
Barbarian races themselves.

With the end of the sixth century the ancient world had passed away and
the mediaeval world had begun, and we have to consider the nature and
movement of the new order, or rather we have to consider some of its
elements, and their development, especially during the period from the
end of the tenth century to the end of the thirteenth, during which it
reached its highest level. We have to pass over the great attempt of the
ninth century, for we can only deal with a small part of a large
subject, and we shall only deal with a few aspects of it, and chiefly
with the development of the spiritual conception of life which we call
religion, with the reconstruction of the political order of society,
with the beginning of a new intellectual life and the pursuit of truth,
and with the development under new forms of the passion for beauty.

* * * * *

I have been compelled to warn you against the romantic superstition that
the Middle Ages were specifically religious, and yet it is quite true
that the first aspect of mediaeval life which compels our attention is
exactly the development of the sense of the significance of the
spiritual quality of life. This was the first great task of the men of
the Middle Ages, and this was in a real sense their achievement; but not
as contradicting the characteristic developments of the Hellenic
civilization, but rather as completing and fulfilling it. It is indeed a
singular superstition that the Hellenic world was lacking in spiritual
insight, but I need only refer you to Mi