Premonstratensians

“ How much of this resemblance was due to survivals from the clan age in Athens and medieval Europe we need not now inquire. It is enough to observe how great must be our difficulties in tracing the evolution of personal out of impersonal character when Homeric bards, feudal trouvères and troubadours, or monks deeply imbued with the universal humanity of a world-religion and the personal ideas of Christianity, were in the course of social progress our early makers, and witnesses to the making, of literature. ”

“ In this respect, the first and second centuries of the Christian era resemble our own time. In the whole Empire, alike in Rome, in Gaul, in Asia, there were old aristocratic families, rich and illustrious, but they were not the class of greatest power. Under them stood a middle class of merchants, land-owners, orators, jurists, professors, and other intellectual men, and this was so numerous, comfortable, and so potent as to cause all the great social forces, from government to industry, to abandon the old aristocracy and court it like a new mistress. ”

“ Then followed the Middle Ages; the dark ages, as they are called, though in their darkness were matured those seeds of knowledge, which, in fulness of time, were to spring up into new and more glorious forms of civilization. The organization of society became more favorable to geographical science. Instead of one overgrown, lethargic empire, oppressing every thing by its colossal weight, Europe was broken up into various independent communities, many of which, adopting liberal forms of government, felt all the impulses natural to freemen ”

“ It seems to me that you might well invite many European professors to come and go through a finishing course in America, studying not only in libraries but in the live world, and observing what happens in American society. Nobody is in a better position than are you to understand ancient society.” My remark may seem at first sight a paradox. But it is no paradox, if one goes to the root of the problem. For what we, men of the twentieth century, call ancient civilisations, were really, when they flourished, new and young civilisations, with but few centuries of history behind them ”

“ The new ruling class was ignorant—few could read or write their names— and they cared little for the learning of Greece and Rome. Much of what was excellent in the ancient civilizations died out because these new peoples were as yet too ignorant to understand or use it, and what was preserved was due to the work of others than themselves. It was with such people and on such a basis that it was necessary for whatever constructive forces still remained to begin again the task of building up new foundations for a future European civilization. ”

“ In some day not far off, with the keenness of a besetting fever, with the poignancy of a dream, and the oppression of a nightmare, he will become conscious that all these European matters are by no means things of an unrelated past, but the living and fermenting present, a ferment in which so tremendously much of the past is a factor. ”

“ One may say that an attitude of humble inferiority before Christianity and Latin culture was an initial condition of mediaeval development, having much to do with setting its future lines. In Italy, men looked back to what seemed even as a greater ancestral self, while in the minds of the northern peoples the ancient Empire represented all knowledge and the summit of human greatness. ”

“ But other men of the same race, stronger than they in mind and less prone to enervating luxury, pressed in from behind. And after the temporary mental and moral collapse which followed upon the occupation of Gaul by the Franks, the race rose to new and increased vigour. New standards of conduct were evolved and new conceptions of excellence arose, through the mingling of Latin and German elements. For the great Roman civilization, a subject of wonder and admiration to all ages, was in many of its developments realized, appropriated, and assimilated by the converted Germans. ”

“ In these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that they lived in communities by themselves, preferring the society of their fellows; that they had a common purse, a common table; that they were ascetic and celibate; that they withdrew from public affairs and from private business, and approached nearly to the Essenes, with whom they had much in common, perpetuating the habit of monasticism, which became afterwards so prominent a feature in the Eastern church. ”

“ In the second period—that of the sedentary state—we observe the same race every where developing itself, or permanently settled, with social, religious, and political institutions, suited to its particular character—original institutions, and civilization full of life and movement, of which Transalpine Gaul offers a model the purest and the most complete. One would say, to follow the animated scenes of that picture, that the theocracy of India, the feudality of the Middle Ages, and the Athenian democracy, had resorted to the same soil, there to combat and rule over one and other in turn. ”

“ It has sometimes happened that one nation has been conquered by another less civilised though more warlike, or that, during social and political revolutions, people have retrograded in knowledge. In such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or of some higher and more educated caste which has been destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a primeval state of superior intelligence, or of science supernaturally communicated. ”

“ It is common knowledge—especially vivid with readers of the famous Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours—that, ethically viewed, the conduct of the Merovingian house was cruel, treacherous, and abominable; and likewise the conduct of their vassals. Frankish kings and nobles appear as men no longer bound by the ethics of the heathenism which they had foresworn, and as yet untouched by the moral precepts of the Christian code. Not Christianity, however, but contact with decadent civilization, and rapid increase of power and wealth, had loosened their heathen standards. ”

“ Both in their different ways are in the wrong: the fanatical worshipper of ancient ways being apt to lose sight of the improvements wrought by progress, whilst he who despises antiquity forgets that the state of society in which we live, and the institutions of the country itself, are all derived from preceding ages. Do or think what we will, our ancestors are far more necessary to us than posterity. ”

“ Now it can be easily shown that the thing we call aristocracy in Europe is not in its origin and spirit an aristocracy at all. It is not a system of spiritual degrees and distinctions like, for example, the caste system of India, or even like the old Greek distinction between free men and slaves. ”

“ Prometheus, on the contrary, has this advantage, that, even in spite of superior beings, he is able to act and to create. It is also a beautiful thought, and well suited to poetry, to represent men as created not by the Supreme Ruler of the world, but by an intermediate agent, who, however, as a descendant of the most ancient dynasty, is of worth and importance enough for such an office. ”

“ So now, in the twentieth century, with a change of terms, and a change in underlying consciousness, our attitude toward the New Dominant is the attitude of the scientists of the nineteenth century to the Old Dominant. We do not insist that our data and interpretations shall be as shocking, grotesque, evil, ridiculous, childish, insincere, laughable, ignorant to nineteenth-centuryites as were their data and interpretations to the medieval-minded. We ask only whether data and interpretations correlate. ”

“ We are told in this allegory that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the most approved model, endowing them with all that is noble, generous, admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call 'other-man-ness.'—There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for this condition, but I spare you. ”

“ We tend, too, to forget, that in these unnumbered millennia there was ample time for it to be possible over certain areas of Europe to evolve what were practically new races, through the prepotency of particular stocks and the annihilation of others. ”

“ This last consideration may serve to indicate how greatly the vulgar opinions current among us as to the origin of modern society stand in need of revision. It is often said that the irregular and various contour of modern civilisation is due to the exuberant and erratic genius of the Germanic races, and it is often contrasted with the dull routine of the Roman Empire. The truth is that the Empire bequeathed to modern society the legal conception to which all this irregularity is attributable ”

“ But Prometheus loved earthly folk, and thought that they had been children long enough. He was a mighty workman, with the whole world for a workshop; and little by little he taught men knowledge that is wonderful to know, so that they grew out of their childhood, and began to take thought for themselves. Some people even say that he knew how to make men,—as we make shapes out of clay,—and set their five wits going. ”

“ Chiefs, who may be called the priests of the phratry when they become remarkable for their ability or for success in shamanism as diviners, medicine-men, and soothsayers, are held for a long time in great reverence, and their accomplishments are repeated in many a story. So in barbaric society the patriarch—the ancient—is held to be the progenitor or prototype of the gens, the phratry, or the tribe, as the case may be. In gentes, phratries, and tribes there is a constant veneration of ancestral ancients. ”

“ That the flickering lamp of learning was not extinguished during the ages of anarchy that succeeded the dissolution of the Roman Empire is undoubtedly due to the monastic orders; but to whom the world is indebted for the diffusion among the masses of that practical religious knowledge which was the germ of modern civilization is not so generally known or recognised. ”

“ Christendom saw a new creed proposed as the bond of unity, and a new race of apostles propagating it with intrigue and with crime, and, in some places, with fire and sword. In proportion as the states of Europe incorporated Ultramontanism with their political institutions, they withered and perished. Old Romanism was one thing, and modern Ultramontanism another. Kingdoms that flourished while they were but Romanised, have perished since they became Tridentine. ”

“ May we not, then, suspect that, just as the dominant classes of ancient days were prevented by the feelings and ideas appropriate to the then-existing social state from seeing how much evil is brought on them, and how much better for them might be a social state in which their power was much less; so the dominant classes of the present day are disabled from seeing how the existing forms of class-subordination redound to their own injury, and how much happier may be their future representatives having social positions less prominent? ”

“ They were despoiled and enslaved by the Roman conquest, and later by the Frankish Kings."
"I did not say, my friends, that our forefathers did not suffer; what I said was that mankind marched onward. The latest descendants of an old world that was crumbling down on all sides to make room for the Christian world—an immense progress!—our fathers were bruised and mutilated under the falling ruins of ancient society. Nevertheless a deep-reaching and far-spreading social transformation was taking place. Mankind marches evermore—slowly, at times—never, however, does it take a step backward." ”

“ Those old axes of flint were great objects to his mind, and one step beyond them was a great stride in progress. That they developed but little cannot be wondered at, not only from their low type, but also from the knowledge that even in the era of history there are nations whose civilization has become fixed and stereotyped for ages; others, who, instead of advancing, have been retrograding. ”

“ Instinctively, they tend also to paint the ancient state in the colours of the European state, attributing to it the same virtues and the same defects, and, therefore, representing its weaknesses as well as its merits in a false light. ”

“ It isn't reasonable to expect Pre-Raphaelites in a new country. But give us three or four hundred years, and we'll produce old masters which, if you ladies will excuse the expression, will knock the spots out of the Middle Ages. ”

“ As it was now no longer the plebeian burgesses as such, but the common people, that were treated as inferior, the new opposition professed from the first to be the representative of the lower classes and particularly of the small farmers; and as the new aristocracy attached itself to the patriciate, so the first movements of this new opposition were interwoven with the final struggles against the privileges of the patricians. ”

“ On the whole, it is only through the Middle Ages that these peoples have been subject to the rigorous servile discipline that characterises a dynastic despotism, secular or religious; and much of the ancient, pagan and prehistoric preconceptions on civil and religious matters appear to have stood over in the habits of thought of the common people even through that interval of submergence under aristocratic and patriarchal rule. ”

“ But you may be assured, Lisa, there is nothing to fear. These people are at least a century behind us, generally speaking. Sociologically, they are where we were before the formation of the Prelatinate—purely a case of arrested development dating from antiquity. Technologically they are very little behind us—perhaps only decades. ”