devotion, and possibly of loving ecstasy-the last, perhaps, more frequent among the sisterhoods of nuns. So the monk, driven by the evil conditions of the world, and by the peril of his soul, won the inner freedom of the spiritual life, in some respects a substitute for the freedom of the old Stoic within the fortress of his will.

One may also bear in mind that the monastery offered greater actual peace and security from outrage for men and women than could be found elsewhere in the mediaeval centuries preceding the thirteenth. Early in that century the Orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans were founded. In them monasticism and the inner freedom of the spiritual life went forth from the cloister into the world. Some connection may be seen between this coming of a more actively ministering, preaching, teaching, travelling monasticism and the rather more secure conditions of life abroad in the wide world.

Our illustrations have been taken from the ancient world because of the naked simplicity in which they present themselves, due, of course, to our relative ignorance of the web of complex influence surrounding, permeating, and affecting them. Yet they may safely be taken as true examples of the working of the free intelligence in the shaping of human institutions, political, legal, or social. Throughout history, modern as well as ancient, all manner of

influences, suggestions, impulsions, or necessities have joined in fashioning institutions, besides the frequently tricked and thwarted conscious intention of the mind. Nevertheless, the factor of human ingenuity is never absent, and usually devises the form. Moreover, in the case of those political institutions through which the governed in some way control the form of government and direct its operation, it is clear that such "free" institutions depend for their growth, efficiency, and strength upon the free energies of at least certain portions of the people and their capacity for self-government. It is also clear that such institutions cease to function, and even to exist, as the political energies of a people dwindle, and their political intelligence, their faculty of deciding aright, their rational self-directing power of self-control, fail them.

This seems always true, while at the same time we recognize that untoward circumstances for example, a tyrannous force majeur-may prevent the growth of free political institutions; and likewise that a force majeur may overthrow or destroy them; or they may lose their efficiency or even cease to function when a situation becomes too large, or too self-willed, as it were, and irresponsible, for their application. The political forms of the Roman Republic may have been unsuited in themselves, and too inelastic, to provide a proper government for a subjugated world. The Republic could have governed itself but not the world; and could

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no longer govern even itself when demoralized by the opportunities and temptations of world conquest. An imperial reorganization was needed, and the despotic power of a single ruler.

And, alas, as human beings multiply, as trade and industry increase, and human affairs in general become stupendous and immense, the intelligence and self-directing self-control of human kind, or of the individuals conducting public business, do not grow greater in proportion to their task; and so fail, and confusion ensues. This thought has come to many doubting minds since the Great War. The memory of this catastrophe may also serve to remind us that sometimes there rise waves of group consciousness, heightened and angry convulsions of herd instinct or national feeling, that may act as force majeur upon men, quite overwhelming their free decisions. Politics, domestic as well as international, only too often exhibit the compulsion of a situation and the force majeur of events. the time this may submerge the free intelligence and judgement even of the intelligent individuals among the people, and all are hurled along in one turbid torrent.

For

We refrain from following our illustrations down the centuries to our own times. Most readily they could be found in the history of England and the history of the United States of America. But the antique world was very rich in human nature. The examples of its politics and its political per

sonages have constantly enlightened later men. Witness the immortal Lives of Plutarch; and the reader of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War might easily conclude that the English statesmen, say of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, drew their political maxims from it. So, perhaps, we need not follow any further our political illustrations of the free action of the mind.

CHAPTER III

THE FREER COURSE OF RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY,

AND SCIENCE:

THE OLDER WORLD

I

PARALLELS AND DIVERGENCIES OF THOUGHT

FROM the partly free and partly determined growth of institutions we turn to still loftier and possibly less constrained conquests of the human mind. In the fields of religion, philosophy, and science we may look for its most complete freedom. While reviewing the contributions of one people and another and of great individuals to these attainments of humanity, some historical order will be observed. Yet, until we approach the modern time, it will not further our merely illustrative purpose to divide our matter into its possibly three mighty provinces of religion, philosophy, and science. Life and history show no sharp boundaries between the three. Like imaginative literature and art, they are phases of the spiritual and intellectual progress which in its entirety responds to the totality of human

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