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tions. Traditions, so far as they come out of other conditions and are accepted as independent authorities in the present conditions, are felt as hindrances. It is because our religious traditions now do not assume authority, but seek to persuade, that active war against them has ceased and that they, are treated with more respect now than in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries.
Other-worldliness, that is, care about the life after death and anxiety to secure bliss there by proper action here, occupied a large share of the interest of mediaeval men. Feudalism is a form of society which arises under given conditions, as we see from the numerous cases of it in history. Mediaeval society shows us a great population caught up in the drift of these two currents, one of world-philosophy and the other of societal environment, and working out all social customs and institu- tions into conformity with them. The force of this philosophy and the energy of the men are astounding. In the civil world there was disintegration, but in the moral world there was to- herence and comprehensiveness in the choice of ideals and in the pursuit of them. In the thirteenth century there was a cul- mination in which the vigorous expansion of all the elements reached a degree of development which is amazing. The men of the time fell into the modes of feudalism as if it had been the order of nature; they accepted it as such. They accepted the leadership of the church with full satisfaction. Preaching and ritual, with popular poet^ry aided by symbolism in art, were the only ways of acting on the minds of the mass; there was no tendency to reflection and criticism any more than among barbarians. The mores were the simple, direct, and naive expression of the prevailing interests of the period; that is why they are so strong and their interaction is so vigorous. The sanction of excommunication was frightful in its effect on beliefs and acts. The canon law is an astonishing product of the time. It is really a codification of the mores modified somewhat, especially in the later additions, by the bias which the church wanted to impress on the mores. It is because the canon law is fictitious in its pretended historical authority, and
