y and which is also within it. For it is the last truth of
the Christian faith that we know God only under the terms of human life
and nature. And with all the cruelty and brutality of the Middle Ages
they taught men love as well as obedience.

Again, it was in these ages, as soon as the confusion of the outer world
was a little reduced, that the passion for knowledge awoke again in
men's hearts. It is true that some were afraid lest the eager inquiry of
men's minds should destroy the foundations of that order which men were
slowly achieving, but still the passionate pursuit of knowledge has
rarely been more determined. And once again the world was rough, but
these men had an instinct, a passion for beauty which expressed itself
in almost everything which they touched. They had not, indeed, the
almost miraculous sense and mastery of the great artists of Greece, that
did not come again till the time of the great Italian artists of the
fifteenth century. But they were free from pedantry, from formalism,
they left the dying art of the ancient world and made their own way.
Their sense of colour was almost infallible, as those who have seen the
mosaics of the older Roman basilicas and of St. Mark's in Venice will
know; but, indeed, we have only to look at the illuminated manuscripts
which are to be found in all our libraries. And in that great art in
which, above all perhaps, they expressed themselves, in their great
architecture, we see the growth of a constructive genius which is only
overshadowed by the superb beauty of its form.

A rough, disorderly, turbulent, greedy, cruel world, but it knew the
human soul, and it knew the human heart. The ancient world had ended in
a great destruction, but the sadness and emptiness of its last days
compel us to feel that it was well that it should end. And the new world
was a world of life, of crude force and restless energy, and from it we
have received the principles and the forms of a great civilization, and
the temper which is never satisfied, for there is no end to life.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

H. W. C. Davis, _Mediaeval Europe_ (Home University Library).

Lord Bryce, _History of Roman Empire_.

Rashdall, _Universities of Empire in the Middle Ages_.

R. L. Poole, _Illustrations of Mediaeval Thought_.

Gierke, _Political Theories of the Middle Ages_.

W. P. Ker, _Epic and Romance_.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Cf. Cicero, _De Legibus_, i. 10-12; and Seneca, _De Beneficiis_,
ii