o the situation in which we find ourselves. The
civilized world has not lost heart or hope; and will not, so long as the
dreams of its immortal youth and the plans of its immortal manhood are
not lost to its memory or passed beyond its retrospective reflection.

_Note_. The doctrine that all History is contemporary History has
been best set forth by Benedetto Croce, of Naples, from whose
works several expressions have here been borrowed, with a
profound acknowledgement of indebtedness to him.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Hegel, _Philosophy of History_, Parts II and III (to be read not as
philosophy, but as history guided and enlightened by philosophy).
Translation in Bohn's Library.

Marvin, _The Living Past_. Clarendon Press.

Adamson, _The Development of Greek Philosophy_. W. Blackwood. (For a
brief but pregnant account consult Webb's _History of Philosophy._ Home
University Library.)

Butcher's _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_ ('What we owe to Greece').
Macmillan.

Murray's _Rise of the Greek Epic_. Clarendon Press.

Warde Fowler's _Rome_. Home University Library.

Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_. Macmillan.

IV

UNITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES[15]

Ergo humanum genus bene se habet et optime, quando secundum quod
potest Deo adsimilatur. Sed genus humanum maxime Deo adsimilatur
quando maxime est unum; vera enim ratio unius in solo illo est.
Propter quod scriptum est: 'Audi, Israel, Dominus Deus tuus unus
est'. DANTE, _De Monarchia_, i. viii.

I

He who shuts his eyes to-day to make a mental picture of the world sees
a globe in which the mass of Asia, the bulk of Africa, and the length of
America vastly outweigh in the balance the straggling and sea-sown
continent of Europe. He sees all manner of races, white and yellow,
brown and black, toiling, like infinitesimal specks, in every manner of
way over many thousands of miles; and he knows that an infinite variety
of creeds and civilizations, of practices and beliefs--some immemorially
old, some crudely new; some starkly savage, and some softly
humane--diversify the hearts of a thousand million living beings. But if
we would enter the Middle Ages, in that height and glory of their
achievement which extended from the middle of the eleventh to the end of
the thirteenth century, we must contract our view abruptly. The known
world of the twelfth century is a very much smaller world than ours, and
it is a world of a va