world has seen. Then Aquinas summed up in his profound speculations the
substance of Catholic theology, and while the morning twilight of modern
science might be discerned in the treatises of Roger Bacon, while
wandering minstrelsy revealed the treasures of modern speech, soon to
be wrought under the hands of Dante and Chaucer into forms of exquisite
beauty, the sacred fervour of the apostolic ages found itself renewed in
the tender and mystic piety of St. Francis of Assisi. It was a wonderful
time, but after all less memorable as the culmination of mediaeval
empire and mediaeval church than as the dawning of the new era in which
we live to-day, and in which the development of human society proceeds
in accordance with more potent methods than those devised by the genius
of pagan or Christian Rome. [Sidenote: The German invaders and the Roman
church] [Sidenote: The wonderful thirteenth century]

For the origin of these more potent methods we must look back to the
early ages of the Teutonic people; for their development and application
on a grand scale we must look chiefly to the history of that most
Teutonic of peoples in its institutions, though perhaps not more than
half-Teutonic in blood, the English, with their descendants in the New
World. The third method of nation-making may be called the Teutonic or
preeminently the English method. It differs from the Oriental and Roman
methods which we have been considering in a feature of most profound
significance; it contains the principle of representation. For this
reason, though like all nation-making it was in its early stages
attended with war and conquest, it nevertheless does not necessarily
require war and conquest in order to be put into operation. Of the other
two methods war was an essential part. In the typical Oriental nation,
such as Assyria or Persia, we see a conquering tribe holding down a
number of vanquished peoples, and treating them like slaves: here the
nation is very imperfectly made, and its government is subject to sudden