Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/241

Rh So much for “simplistic” habits of mind. As to ill-considered generalization, it manifests itself on every page of the literature of that time. From a single case of impartiality reported of the English of olden time, Olivier de la Marche concludes that at that period the English were virtuous, and because of that had been able to conquer France. The importance of a particular case is exaggerated, because it is seen in an ideal light. Moreover, every case can be paralleled in sacred history, and so be exalted to higher significance. In 1404 a procession of students at Paris was assaulted: two were wounded, the clothes of a third were torn. This was enough for the chancellor of the University, carried away by the heat of his indignation, and by a simple consonance, “Les enfants, les jolis escoliers comme agneaux innocens,” to launch into comparison of the incident to the massacre of Bethlehem.

If for every particular case an explanation is so easily admitted, and, once admitted, takes root in the mind without meeting with resistance, then the danger of wrong judgments is extremely great. Nietzsche said that abstaining from, wrong judgments would make life impossible, and it is probable that the intense life which we sometimes envy past centuries, was partly due to the facility of false judgments. In our own day too, in times which require the utmost exertion of national force, the nerves need the help of false judgment. The men: of the Middle Ages lived in a continual mental crisis. They could not for a moment dispense with false judgments of the grossest kind. If, in the fifteenth century, the cause of the dukes of Burgundy could persuade so many Frenchmen first to breach of fealty and next to hostility to their country, this political sentiment can only be explained by a whole tissue of emotional conceptions and confused ideas. It is in this light that the general and constant habit of ridiculously exaggerating the number of enemies killed in battle should be considered. Chastellain gives a loss of five nobles on the side of the duke at the battle of Gavre, as against twenty or thirty thousand of the Ghent rebels.

What are we to say, lastly, of the curious levity of the authors of the close of the Middle Ages, which often impresses us as an absolute lack of mental power? It sometimes seems