and only a few occasional angels. Sometimes, their fear of

the future filled their souls with humility and piety, but often
it influenced them the other way and made them cruel and

sentimental. They would first of all murder all the women
and children of a captured city and then they would devoutly

march to a holy spot and with their hands gory with the blood
of innocent victims, they would pray that a merciful heaven forgive

them their sins. Yea, they would do more than pray, they
would weep bitter tears and would confess themselves the most

wicked of sinners. But the next day, they would once more
butcher a camp of Saracen enemies without a spark of mercy

in their hearts.
Of course, the Crusaders were Knights and obeyed a somewhat

different code of manners from the common men. But in
such respects the common man was just the same as his master.

He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a
shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful

service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when
his feverishimagination saw a ghost.

In judging these good people, however, it is wise to remember
the terrible disadvantages under which they lived.

They were really barbarians who posed as civilised people.
Charlemagne and Otto the Great were called ``Roman Emperors,''

but they had as little resemblance to a real Roman Emperor
(say Augustus or Marcus Aurelius) as ``King'' Wumba

Wumba of the upper Congo has to the highly educated rulers
of Sweden or Denmark. They were savages who lived amidst

glorious ruins but who did not share the benefits of the
civilisation which their fathers and grandfathers had destroyed.

They knew nothing. They were ignorant of almost every fact
which a boy of twelve knows to-day. They were obliged to go

to one single book for all their information. That was the
Bible. But those parts of the Bible which have influenced the

history of the human race for the better are those chapters of
the New Testament which teach us the great moral lessons of

love, charity and forgiveness. As a handbook of astronomy,
zoology, botany, geometry and all the other sciences, the venerable

book is not entirely reliable. In the twelfth century, a
second book was added to the mediaeval library, the great

encyclopaedia of useful knowledge, compiled by Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ. Why

the Christian church should have been willing to accord such
high honors to the teacher of Alexander the Great, whereas

they condemned all other Greek philosophers on account of
their heathenish doctrines, I really do not know. But next to

the Bible, Aristotle was recognized as the only reliable teacher
whose works could be safely placed into the hands of true

Christians.
His works had reached Europe in a somewhat roundabout

way. They had gone from Greece to Alexandria. They had
then been translated from the Greek into the Arabic language

by the Mohammedans who conquered Egypt in the seventh
century. They had followed the Moslem armies into Spain and

the philosophy of the great Stagirite (Aristotle was a native of
Stagira in Macedonia) was taught in the Moorish universities

of Cordova. The Arabic text was then translated into Latin
by the Christian students who had crossed the Pyrenees to get

a liberal education and this much travelled version of the famous
books was at last taught at the different schools of northwestern

Europe. It was not very clear, but that made it all
the more interesting.

With the help of the Bible and Aristotle, the most brilliant
men of the Middle Ages now set to work to explain all things

between Heaven and Earth in their relation to the expressed
will of God. These brilliant men, the so-called Scholasts or

Schoolmen, were really very intelligent, but they had obtained
their information exclusively from books, and never from actual

observation. If they wanted to lecture on the sturgeon
or on caterpillars, they read the Old and New Testaments and

Aristotle, and told their students everything these good books
had to say upon the subject of caterpillars and sturgeons.

They did not go out to the nearest river to catch a sturgeon.
They did not leave their libraries and repair to the backyard

to catch a few caterpillars and look at these animals and study
them in their native haunts. Even such famous scholars as

Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas did not inquire whether
the sturgeons in the land of Palestine and the caterpillars of

Macedonia might not have been different from the sturgeons
and the caterpillars of western Europe.

When occasionally an exceptionally curious person like
Roger Bacon appeared in the council of the learned and began

to experiment with magnifying glasses and funny little telescopes
and actually" target="_blank" title="ad.事实上；实际上">actually dragged the sturgen and the caterpillar

into the lecturing room and proved that they were different
from the creatures described by the Old Testament and by

Aristotle, the Schoolmen shook their dignified heads. Bacon
was going too far. When he dared to suggest that an hour

of actualobservation was worth more than ten years with
Aristotle and that the works of that famous Greek might as

well have remained untranslated for all the good they had ever
done, the scholasts went to the police and said, ``This man is

a danger to the safety of the state. He wants us to study
Greek that we may read Aristotle in the original. Why should

he not be contented with our Latin-Arabic translation which
has satisfied our faithful people for so many hundred years?

Why is he so curious about the insides of fishes and the insides
of insects? He is probably a wickedmagiciantrying to upset

the established order of things by his Black Magic.'' And so
well did they plead their cause that the frightened guardians

of the peace forbade Bacon to write a single word for more
than ten years. When he resumed his studies he had learned

a lesson. He wrote his books in a queer cipher which made it
impossible for his contemporaries to read them, a trick which

became common as the Church became more desperate in its
attempts to prevent people from asking questions which would

lead to doubts and infidelity.
This, however, was not done out of any wicked desire to

keep people ignorant. The feeling which prompted the heretic
hunters of that day was really a very kindly one. They firmly

believed--nay, they knew--that this life was but the preparation
for our real existence in the next world. They felt convinced

that too much knowledge made people uncomfortable,
filled their minds with dangerous opinions and led to doubt

and hence to perdition. A mediaeval Schoolman who saw one
of his pupils stray away from the revealed authority of the

Bible and Aristotle, that he might study things for himself, felt
as uncomfortable as a loving mother who sees her young child

approach a hot stove. She knows that he will burn his little
fingers if he is allowed to touch it and she tries to keep him

back, if necessary she will use force. But she really loves
the child and if he will only obey her, she will be as good to him

as she possibly can be. In the same way the mediaeval guardians
of people's souls, while they were strict in all matters

pertaining to the Faith, slaved day and night to render the
greatest possible service to the members of their flock. They

held out a helping hand whenever they could and the society
of that day shows the influence of thousands of good men and

pious women who tried to make the fate of the average mortal
as bearable as possible.

A serf was a serf and his position would never change. But
the Good Lord of the Middle Ages who allowed the serf to

remain a slave all his life had bestowed an immortal soul upon
this humble creature and therefore he must be protected in his

rights, that he might live and die as a good Christian. When
he grew too old or too weak to work he must be taken care

of by the feudal master for whom he had worked. The serf,
therefore, who led a monotonous and dreary life, was never

haunted by fear of to-morrow. He knew that he was ``safe''--
that he could not be thrown out of employment, that he would

always have a roof over his head (a leaky roof, perhaps, but
roof all the same), and that he would always have something

to eat.
This feeling of ``stability'' and of ``safety'' was found in all

classes of society. In the towns the merchants and the artisans
established guilds which assured every member of a steady income.

It did not encourage the ambitious to do better than
their neighbours. Too often the guilds gave protection to

the ``slacker'' who managed to ``get by.'' But they established
a 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