64 PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM n 



middle ages are, unfortunately, too often derived 

 from writers who have never seriously grappled 

 with philosophical and theological problems : and 

 hence that strange myth of a millennium of moon- 

 shine to which I have adverted. 



However, no very profound study of the works 

 of contemporary writers who, without devoting 

 themselves specially to theology or philosophy, 

 were learned and enlightened such men, for 

 example, as Eginhard or Dante is necessary to 

 convince one's self, that, for them, the world of the 

 theologian was an ever-present and awful reality. 

 From the centre of that world, the Divine Trinity, 

 surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints, 

 contemplated and governed the insignificant sen- 

 sible world in which the inferior spirits of men, 

 burdened with the debasement of their material 

 embodiment and continually solicited to their 

 perdition by a no less numerous and almost as 

 powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly 

 struggling on the edge of the pit of everlasting 

 damnation. 1 



1 There is no exaggeration in this brief and summary view of 

 the Catholic cosmos. But it would be unfair to leave it to be 

 supposed that the Reformation made any essential alteration, 

 except perhaps for the worse, in that cosmology which called 

 itself "Christian." The protagonist of the Reformation, from 

 whom the whole of the Evangelical sects are lineally descended, 

 states the case with that plainness of speech, not to say bru- 

 tality, which characterised him. Luther says that man is a 

 beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders ; sometimes 

 God rides him, and sometimes Satan. " Sic voluntas humana 

 in inedio posita est, ceu jumentum ; si insedeiit Deus, vult efc 



