general feeling of content and assurance among the
labouring classes which no longer exists in our day of general
competition. The Middle Ages were familiar with the dangers of what we
modern people call "corners," when a single rich man gets hold of all
the available grain or soap or pickled herring, and then forces the
world to buy from him at his own price. The authorities, therefore,
discouraged wholesale trading and regulated the price at which merchants
were allowed to sell their goods.

The Middle Ages disliked competition. Why compete and fill the world
with hurry and rivalry and a multitude of pushing men, when the Day of
Judgement was near at hand, when riches would count for nothing and
when the good serf would enter the golden gates of Heaven while the bad
knight was sent to do penance in the deepest pit of Inferno?

In short, the people of the Middle Ages were asked to surrender part
of their liberty of thought and action, that they might enjoy greater
safety from poverty of the body and poverty of the soul.

And with a very few exceptions, they did not object. They firmly
believed that they were mere visitors upon this planet--that they were
here to be prepared for a greater and more important life. Deliberately
they turned their backs upon a world which was filled with suffering and
wickedness and injustice. They pulled down the blinds that the rays
of the sun might not distract their attention from that chapter in the
Apocalypse which told them of that heavenly light which was to illumine
their happiness in all eternity. They tried to close their eyes to most
of the joys of the world in which they lived that they might enjoy those
which awaited them in the near future. They accepted life as a necessary
evil and welcomed death as the beginning of a glorious day.

The Greeks and the Romans had never bothered about the future but had
tried to establish their Paradise right here upon this earth. They had
succeeded in making life extremely pleasant for those of their fellow
men who did not happen to be slaves. Then came the other extreme of the
Middle Ages, when man built himself a Paradise beyond the highest clouds
and turned this world into a vale of tears for high and low, for rich
and poor, for the intelligent and the dumb. It was time for the pendulum
to swing back in the other direction, as I shall tell you in my next
chapter.

MEDIAEVAL TRADE

HOW THE CRUSADES ONCE MORE MADE THE MEDITERRAN