The pervading defect of it all has been already referred to
in a preceding chapter--an inadequate conception of society as an
organism, living and growing, like other organisms, according to
special laws of its own. In these brilliant volumes on the Middle
Ages, the special problems which that period suggests are not stated,
far less solved; they are not even suspected. The feudal polity, the
Catholic Church, the theocratic supremacy of the Popes, considered as
institutions which the historian is called upon to estimate and judge;
the gradual dissolution of both feudalism and Catholicism, brought
about by the spread of industry in the temporal order and of science
in the spiritual order, are not even referred to. Many more topics
might be added to this list of weighty omissions. It would be needless
to say that no blame attaches to Gibbon for neglecting views of
history which had not emerged in his time, if there were not persons
who, forgetting the slow progress of knowledge, are apt to ascribe the
defects of a book to incompetence in its author. If Gibbon's
conception of the Middle Ages seems to us inadequate now, it is
because since his time our conceptions of society in that and in all
periods have been much enlarged.
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