134 MEDIEVAL HISTORY 



organization, were differentiated from one another out of the older 

 and simpler feudal government. It must be true that this process 

 of differentiation in one state had much of similarity with that in 

 another, and while we shall never be justified in saying that because 

 we are certain of a fact in French history we must therefore find it 

 in English, we have a right to expect a comparison of results to 

 clarify our knowledge, to help us in the understanding and arrange- 

 ment of details, and even to point out to us where to look and what 

 to look for. Here then is another large field of work in which already 

 something has been done, but hardly more than enough to show 

 what is possible. * 



It would be possible to point out still further work that needs to 

 be done in the second half of the Middle Ages. I have taken my 

 illustrations from the field of political history, which is the peculiar 

 field of this Section, and their form has been determined by my own 

 special interest; but the ecclesiastical, intellectual, economic, artistic, 

 and scientific revolutions of that period were not less decisive than 

 the political and institutional, nor is a thorough understanding of 

 them less essential to our knowledge of the age. The same work 

 must be done in all these directions, and the results brought into 

 form for combination in a common whole before the period of pre- 

 paration can be ended. Here is surely work of the very highest order 

 for a generation, for a half-century, of historical investigation. The 

 militant progressive historical scholarship of the first half of the 

 twentieth century, in so far as it deals with the Middle Ages, should 

 find in the last five hundred years of that field the place to apply 

 with rich results the keen critical insight, the skilled historical 

 judgment, which should still be trained in the study of the first five 

 hundred years. Perhaps it may be thought that fifty years is too 

 short a time in which to bring our knowledge of these centuries to 

 a practical completion, but if we take account of what has been 

 done in our knowledge of the earlier period in the last fifty years, 

 and especially if we consider the amount of surely established 

 knowledge with which Waitz and Roth began what it is not too 

 much to call tjie first scientific study of the Middle Ages, and com- 

 pare it with that with which we may now begin our study of the 

 later period, we have every reason to look forward to the practical 

 completion of our task in but little more than the lifetime of a 

 modern generation. Then it will be possible for a definitive work to 

 be written on the whole of the Middle Ages. Then we may hope to 

 understand with some completeness the origins of modern govern- 

 ments and to be able to find the historical explanation of their 

 peculiarities. 



At the beginning of this paper I spoke of certain lines of investiga- 

 tion as likely to lead to the largest new results in our field. The pro- 



