.[41] The cleverest fables of animals were in _Isengrimen_,
published in Ghent about 1140 in Latin verse--the story of the sick
lion and his cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such
fables did not remain special to German national literature, but
became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it
is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in
Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has
always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of
landscape, animal, and genre painting.

CHAPTER III

THE NAIVE FEELING AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

In the development and maturing of the race, as of the individual,
nothing is more helpful than contact with foreign elements, people of
other manners, thoughts, and feelings. Intimate intercourse between
different nationalities rouses what is best in the soul of a nation,
inviting, as it does, to discussion and opposition, as well as to the
acquisition of new ideas. The conquests of Alexander the Great opened
up a new world to the Greek, and a new culture arose--Hellenism. It
was a new world that rose before the astonished eyes of the
Crusader--in his case too, the East; but the resulting culture did
not last. The most diverse motives fused to bring about this great
migration to a land at once unknown and yet, through religion,
familiar; and a great variety of characters and nations met under the
banner of the Cross.

Naturally this shaking up together, not only of Europeans among
themselves, but of the eastern with the western world, brought about
a complete revolution in manners, speech, art, science, trade,
manufacture, thought, and feeling, and so became an important factor
in general progress.

The narrow boundaries of nationality, race, and education were broken
through; all felt equal before the leading idea; men, places, plants,
and animals were alike new and wonderful. Little wonder if German
knights returning home from the East wove fiction with their fact,
and produced the most fantastic and adventurous heroic songs.

Many of the noblest of the nations joined the Crusades in pious
ardour for the cause, and it is easy to imagine the effect of the
complete novelty of scene upon them. With such tremendous new
impressions to cope with, it is not surprising that even the best
minds, untrained as they were, were unequal to the task, and that the
descriptions of real experiences