Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/28

 But even the Roman peace, bought as it was at the cost of learning and the arts, was but a mechanical peace; in the wilder, more turbulent and more heterogeneous peoples of the later Empire the bodies but not the wills of men were in subju- gation. The great system of Roman Law, which Numa, the Moses of Rome, had invested with supernatural awe, had become but an external rule; even in Rome herself, poorer in people, poorer in commerce, poorer than ever in ideas, the sanction of patriotism was failing, and her citizens were held together for the most part by their baser and more dangerous passions'. For Eastern Europe the University of Constantinople established a compact and uniform system of thought, subtle prolix and acquisitive rather than original or profound; but in the West, under the Frank and later Northern devastations, the very traditions of learning and obedience were broken up; schools were closed, and even the art of writing was almost lost. Then it was that the cohesion and development of Western Europe

1 "Nec ullum satis validum imperium erat coercendis seditionibus populi, flagitia hominum ut cæremonias deum protegentis." Tac. Ann. III. 60.