taken place in a society which knew its past.

Again, you may pick almost any phrase referring to the Middle Ages out
of any newspaper--if you are a man read in the Middle Ages--and you will
find in it not only a definite historical falsehood with regard to the
fact referred to, or the analogy drawn, but also a false philosophy.

For instance, the other day I read this phrase with regard to the burial
of a certain gentleman of my neighbourhood in Sussex: "We are surely
past the phase of mediaeval thought in which it was imagined that a few
words spoken over the lifeless clay would determine the fate of the soul
for all eternity." Just notice the myriad falsehoods of a phrase like
that! I will not discuss what is connoted by the words "past the phase
of mediaeval thought"--it connotes of course that the human mind changes
fundamentally with the centuries, and therefore that whatever we think
is probably wrong, and that what we are sure of we cannot be sure of, an
absurd conclusion. I will only note the historical falsehoods. When on
earth did the "Middle Ages" lay down that a "few words over lifeless
clay determined the fate of the soul for all eternity"? On the contrary,
the Middle Ages laid it down--it was their peculiar doctrine--that it
was impossible to determine the fate of the soul; that no one could tell
the fate of any one individual soul; that it was a grievous sin, among
the most grievous of sins, to affirm positive knowledge that any
individual had lost his soul. More than this, the Middle Ages were
peculiar in their insistence upon the doctrine that a man might have
been very bad and might have had all the appearance of having lost his
soul so far as human judgment went, and yet was liable to a midway place
between salvation and damnation, and they affirmed that this midway
place did not lead to either fate but necessarily to salvation and to
salvation only.