many and for most a negligible factor. We
are only too familiar with the community that could barely support one
parish church, boasting its one-half dozen religious organizations, all
together claiming the adherence of only a minority of the population,
but in the Middle Ages, religion was not only the most important and
pervasive thing, it was a moral obligation on every man, woman and
child, and rejection or even indifference was unthinkable. If once we
grasp this fact," continues Cram, "we can understand how in the eleventh
century, the whole world should cover itself with 'its white robe of
churches.'"

The second great fact observable in the times of Dante is that it was an
age of inquiry and of efficient craftsmanship. Many of our generation
think that Dante's day being so far removed from the age of printing and
the spirit of positivism, and being given to the upholding of authority
almost as an unexhaustible source of knowledge, was wholly unacquainted
with scientific research. Furthermore they declare that education then
was almost at its minimum stage. A little study will show that the
people of that era were not unacquainted with the scientific spirit and
it will also prove that if education did not prevail, in the sense that
everybody had an opportunity to read and write--a consummation hardly to
be expected--education in the sense of efficiency--education in the
etymological sense, i.e. the training of the faculties so that the
individual might develop creative self-expression and especially that he
might bring out what was best in him, all which meant knowledge highly
useful to himself and others--that kind of education was not uncommon.

To give an idea of the scientific inquiry and sharp observation of mind
in those days, I might cite Dante as a master exponent of nature study,
and adept of science. Passing over his experiment in optics given in
Paradiso, given so naturally as to justify the inference that
investigation in physics was then not an uncommon mode of gaining
knowledge, I call your attention to an observation made by Alexander
Von Humboldt, the distinguished scientist, to prove that nothing escaped
the eyes of Dante, intent equally upon natural phenomena and the things
of the soul. Von Humboldt suggests that the rhetorical figure employed
by Dante in his description of the River of Light with its banks of
wonderful flowers (Par. XXX, 61) is an application of our poet's
knowledge of the pho