324 Heredity. 



establish it to demonstration. Yet, if we open the Collection des 

 Historiens de Ganle et de France, and if, glancing at the chronicles 

 and memoirs of the Middle Ages, we disregard the subjects which 

 have specially engaged the minds of historians accounts of battles, 

 sieges, captures of hamlets, alliances and treaties of peace and 

 direct our attention to what they often regard as of no importance 

 for history that is to say, anecdotes, miracles, and dreams which 

 give every minute and individual detail we cannot fail to arrive 

 at the conclusion that the state of the intellect was not then the 

 same as to-day, and that the difference between the two epochs is 

 constitutional, organic. It is, however, difficult to define in what 

 the difference consists. It would require an acute mind, well 

 acquainted with medical science, and possessed of good psycho- 

 logical insight, to define it exactly. In general terms, it may be 

 said that it consists in this, that the Middle Ages felt what the 

 eighteenth century has thought ; that in the one the affections pre- 

 dominated, in the other reason; that a brain in the Middle Ages 

 was full of sensations and images, in the eighteenth century it 

 was full of abstractions and ideas. 



Certainly in no period have men dwelt more in the region of 

 imagination, sentiment, and dreams. This is abundantly shown 

 in Gothic art, in chivalry, in the writings of Dante and of the 

 various schools of mystics. 1 With the exception of a few extra- 

 ordinary minds and a few dry school-men, that whole period lived 

 altogether in sentiment. The circumstances of the times were 

 favourable to this state of things constant wars, battles, sieges 

 pillage, violent emotions of every kind. The sentiment, con- 

 tinually excited and quickened, became exaggerated like an hyper- 

 trophied organ. Hence this curious result, that the excessive 

 development of sensitiveness checked the development of the 

 intelligence. In this feverish storm of emotions and impressions, 

 cool, calm judgment appeared at a disadvantage. Then were the 

 minds of children in the bodies of men. Whereas we find our- 

 selves, from the period of infancy, in an atmosphere of science, 



1 E.g. the schools of St. Victor, St. Bernard, Gerson, etc., and the great 

 German mystics of the I4th century, Eckardt, Tauler, and Henry Suso. We 

 might mention also Raymond Lulle, whose life was so romantic and eccentric. 



