The Middle Ages! They seem so far away; intellectually so preposterous, spiritually so strange. Bits of them please our taste; their window glass, their sculpture, as if those straitened ages really were the time of romance, which they were not, God knows, in the sense commonly taken. Yet perhaps they were such intellectually, or at least spiritually.
Now if the pageant of those centuries charm our eyes with forms so full of meaning, why should we stand indifferent to the processes of mediaeval thinking and the passion?
Let the reader be mindful of his purpose, follow through the Middle Ages the development of intellectual energy and the growth of emotion. Holding in view, we, students all, shall not stray from our quest after those human qualities which impelled the strivings informed their imaginations, and moved them to love and tears and pity.
We have to sympathize with their best, and understand their lives and the conditions recognizing their commitments and contribution. This is Volume 3.
