190 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



except as he might be deemed a fighting machine for 

 the benefit of his feudal lord. Justice was nonexist- 

 ent, and the only rule in the land was the will of the 

 feudal lord. It is difficult to realize to-day the evils 

 of such conditions among the people in those times. 

 A slight indication is suggested by the so-called truce 

 of Grod, established in the eleventh century. At that 

 time the Roman Church, realizing the evils that af- 

 flicted the people, made an attempt to remedy it in 

 part by checking the ceaseless strifes which agitated 

 the people. Finding thi« impossible, a simple means 

 was tried by the establishment of the * ' truce of God. ' ' 

 This was merely the endeavor to use the authority of 

 the church to reduce the number of needless strifes 

 between the nobles, by proclaiming that there should 

 be three days of each week when warfare should 

 cease, the other four being given over to the normal 

 condition of warfare. Even this modest attempt 

 failed. Now, when we remember that, though the 

 lords enjoyed these quarrels, and, shut up in their 

 castles, suffered little from them, the people, not thus 

 protected, were constantly exposed to the horrors of 

 raids and robberies, it becomes evident that, under 

 feudalism, the condition of the individual descended 

 to its lowest ebb. A man was of less value than a 

 lord's war horse. 



But the laws of progress brought the inevitable 

 change, and once more came an exaltation of the 

 interests of the individual. The first step toward 

 breaking away from the condition of feudalism came 

 from the rise of cities. These cities were groups of 

 people, largely merchants, who were not serfs of the 

 feudal barons, and who united by a compact to live 

 or die together independent of the feudal lords. 



