HISTORY OF MORALS 113 



Here it is that we first see, so clearly as to 

 realise it, a plain line of demarcation between 

 one set of men and another set : the one set 

 holding all the authority, forcing the other set 

 to do all kinds of hard work, and doing with 

 that inferior order exactly as the will approved. 

 To the Romans the possession of slaves was 

 deeply important ; to mankind in general that 

 sanctioned custom was to become still more 

 important. 



If we glance at the state of Europe in the 

 Middle Ages, we again find two, and only two, 

 quite distinct classes of men. In the real upper 

 class were the nobility and the immediate re- 

 tainers — possessing, ordering, fighting — men of 

 real mental and active physical power, of great 

 skill at arms, and taking full advantage of their 

 quite unquestioned position. In the lower class 

 were the thralls — the hewers of wood, the culti- 

 vators, the herdsmen of swine — allowed to work 

 hard and live, not necessarily miserable, but abso- 

 lutely in the hands of their lords, to be done 

 unto as those lords might choose. The slaves of 

 Rome had become the thralls of the Middle Ages. 

 It is possible that in those times, when com- 

 munications were not merely bad but scarcely 

 existed except for the well mounted, when educa- 

 tion was wanting and books unknown, might 

 was necessarily right ; and these hard, dangerous 

 days had to be lived through much as they 

 were. The fact remains that until gunpowder 

 was invented, printing discovered, and the uses 

 to which iron can be put full}^ realised, the 



