sake of understanding them that we read history. All the rest of human
fortunes is in the nature of an introduction or an epilogue. Now by a
period of history we mean the tract of years in which this balance of
harmonious activities, this reconciliation of the real with the ideal,
is in course of preparing, is actually subsisting, and is vanishing
away.

Such a period were the Middle Ages--the centuries that separate the
ancient from the modern world. They were something more than centuries
of transition, though the genius of a Gibbon has represented them as a
long night of ignorance and force, only redeemed from utter squalor by
some lingering rays of ancient culture. It is true that they began with
an involuntary secession from the power which represented, in the fifth
century, the wisdom of Greece and the majesty of Rome; and that they
ended with a jubilant return to the Promised Land of ancient art and
literature. But the interval had been no mere sojourning in Egypt. The
scholars of the Renaissance destroyed as much as they created. They
overthrew one civilisation to clear the ground for another. It was
imperative that the old canons of thought and conduct should be
reconsidered. The time comes in the history of all half-truths when they
form the great obstacles to the pursuit of truth. But this should not
prevent us from recognising the value of the half-truth as a guide to
those who first discover it; nor should we fall into the error, common
to all reformers, of supposing that they comprehend the whole when they
assert the importance of the neglected half. Erasmus had reason on his
side; but so, too, had Aquinas. Luther was in his rough way a prophet;
but St. Bernard also had a message for humanity.

Medieval culture was imperfect, was restricted to a narrow circle of
superior minds, offered no satisfaction to some of the higher faculties