Whereas I
believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of
the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of
words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may
find ourselves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and
kind--he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very
rude and ill-taught--he is quite urbane."
At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their
good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally;
chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each
other. No field, in the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and
every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders,
peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled
themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while
the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the
servants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agricultural
pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept
educated Europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could
have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war
without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. Men
learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for
education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad
space of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or
for growth of food.
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