wept over western Europe as the Nile had swept across
the valley of ancient Egypt. It left behind a fertile sediment of
prosperity. Prosperity meant leisure hours and these leisure hours gave
both men and women a chance to buy manuscripts and take an interest in
literature and art and music.

Then once more was the world filled with that divine curiosity which has
elevated man from the ranks of those other mammals who are his distant
cousins but who have remained dumb, and the cities, of whose growth and
development I have told you in my last chapter, offered a safe shelter
to these brave pioneers who dared to leave the very narrow domain of the
established order of things.

They set to work. They opened the windows of their cloistered and
studious cells. A flood of sunlight entered the dusty rooms and
showed them the cobwebs which had gathered during the long period of
semi-darkness.

They began to clean house. Next they cleaned their gardens.

Then they went out into the open fields, outside the crumbling town
walls, and said, "This is a good world. We are glad that we live in it."

At that moment, the Middle Ages came to an end and a new world began.

THE RENAISSANCE

PEOPLE ONCE MORE DARED TO BE HAPPY JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE ALIVE. THEY
TRIED TO SAVE THE REMAINS OF THE OLDER AND MORE AGREEABLE CIVILISATION
OF ROME AND GREECE AND THEY WERE SO PROUD OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS THAT
THEY SPOKE OF A RENAISSANCE OR RE-BIRTH OF CIVILISATION

THE Renaissance was not a political or religious movement. It was a
state of mind.

The men of the Renaissance continued to be the obedient sons of the
mother church. They were subjects of kings and emperors and dukes and
murmured not.

But their outlook upon life was changed. They began to wear different
clothes--to speak a different language--to live different lives in
different houses.

They no longer concentrated all their thoughts and their efforts
upon the blessed existence that awaited them in Heaven. They tried to
establish their Paradise upon this planet, and, truth to tell, they
succeeded in a remarkable degree.

I have quite often warned you against the danger that lies in historical
dates. People take them too literally. They think of the Middle Ages as
a period of darkness and ignorance. "Click," says the clock, and the
Renaissance begins and cities and palaces are flooded with the bright
sunlight of an eager intellectual curiosity.

As a matter of fact,