t may suggest very
interesting inquiries for the metaphysician; but we should find not only
that the philosophy is very tough and very obsolete, and therefore very
wearisome for any but the strongest intellectual appetites, but also
that it does not really answer our question. The philosopher does not
give us the reasons which determine men to believe, but the official
justification of their beliefs which has been elaborated by the most
acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical
system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe;
but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it
can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical
principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the
metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it
took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false,
but whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of
both; but at any rate it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is
because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts
and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years
ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real
charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others.
He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but
they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made
to express the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the moral and
political convictions which were dearest to him. When we see how the
system could be turned to account by the most powerful imagination, we
can understand better what it really meant for the commonplace and
ignorant monks who accepted it as a mere matter of course. We begin to
see what were the great forces really at work below the surface; and the
issues which were being blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were
quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to
discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles
of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie
inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the
ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows
how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most
vehement convictions.

We may hold that the historian should