like applying it to our aeroplanes. Similarly the just description of
Feudalism, and of how far it was a part and how far rather an impediment
in the main mediaeval movement, is confused by current debates about
quite modern things--especially that modern thing, the English
squirearchy. Feudalism was very nearly the opposite of squirearchy. For
it is the whole point of the squire that his ownership is absolute and
is pacific. And it is the very definition of Feudalism that it was a
tenure, and a tenure by military service. Men paid their rent in steel
instead of gold, in spears and arrows against the enemies of their
landlord. But even these landlords were not landlords in the modern
sense; every one was practically as well as theoretically a tenant of
the King; and even he often fell into a feudal inferiority to a Pope or
an Emperor. To call it mere tenure by soldiering may seem a
simplification; but indeed it is precisely here that it was not so
simple as it seems. It is precisely a certain knot or enigma in the
nature of Feudalism which makes half the struggle of European history,
but especially English history.

There was a certain unique type of state and culture which we call
mediaeval, for want of a better word, which we see in the Gothic or the
great Schoolmen. This thing in itself was above all things logical. Its
very cult of authority was a thing of reason, as all men who can reason
themselves instantly recognize, even if, like Huxley, they deny its
premises or dislike its fruits. Being logical, it was very exact about
who had the authority. Now Feudalism was not quite logical, and was
never quite exact about who had the authority. Feudalism already
flourished before the mediaeval renascence began. It was, if not the
forest the mediaevals had to clear, at least the rude timber with which
they had to build. Feudalism was a fighting growth of the Dark Ages
before the Middle Ages; the age of barbarians resisted by
semi-barbarians. I do not say this in disparagement of it. Feudalism was
mostly a very human thing; the nearest contemporary name for it was
homage, a word which almost means humanity. On the other hand, mediaeval
logic, never quite reconciled to it, could become in its extremes
inhuman. It was often mere prejudice that protected men, and pure reason
that burned them. The feudal units grew through the lively localism of
the Dark Ages, when hills without roads shut in a valley like a
garrison. Patriot