"A Gian Angelo Medici, agreeable, diplomatic, benevolent, and pleasure-loving, sufficed to initiate a series of events which kept the occidental races in perturbation through two centuries."[163] Great crises come when great new forces are at work changing fundamental conditions, while powerful institutions and traditions still hold old systems intact. The fifteenth century was such a period. It is in such crises that great men find their opportunity. The man and the age react on each other. The measures of policy which are adopted and upon which energy is expended become components in the evolution. The evolution, although it has the character of a nature process, always must issue by and through men whose passions, follies, and wills are a part of it but are also always dominated by it. The interaction defies our analysis, but it does not discourage our reason and conscience from their play on the situation, if we are content to know that their function must be humble. Stoll boldly declares that if one of us had been a judge in the times of the witch trials he would have reasoned as the witch judges did, and would have tortured like them.[164] If that is so, then it behooves us by education and will, with intelligent purpose, to criticise and judge even the most established ways of our time, and to put courage and labor into resistance to the current mores where we judge them wrong. It would be a mighty achievement of the science of society if it could lead up to an art of societal administration which should be intelligent, effective, and scientific. [90] _N. S. Amer. Anthrop._, IV, 3. [91] _Globus_, LXXXVII, 130. [92] "Religion of Israel," Hastings, _Dict._, Supp. vol. [93] Tiele, _Relig. in Alterthum_, I, 295. [94] _Ibid._, 242. [95] Stammler, _Stellung der Frauen_, 3. [96] Friedberg, _Recht der Eheschliessung_. [97] _Ztsft. f. Volkskunde_, XI, 272. [98] Scherr, _Deutsche Kultur-und Sittengesch._, 171. [99] Stammler, _Stellung der Frauen_, 8. [100] Wachsmuth, _Bauernkriege_, in Raumer, _Taschenbuch_, V. [101] _Charters_, 449. [102] Stubbs, _History_, II, 453. [103] _Stellung der Frauen_, 3. [104] Sec. 86. [105] Hiekisch, _Tungusen_, 31; Sieroshevski, _Yakuty_, I, 415. [106] Simkhovitsch, _Feldgemeinschaft in Russland_, Chap. XXIX. [107] _Japan and the Japanese_, 360. [108] _Vererbung und Auslese_, 282. [109] _Pol. Anth. Revue_, III, 416. [110] Brandt in _Umschau_, VIII, 722. [111] Hearn, _Japan_, 193. [112] _Ibid._, 112. Cf. sec. 76. [113] _Web of Indian Life_, 125. [114] _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, 352. [115] Mayer, _Oesterreich_, II, 454-465. [116] Gauthiez, _Lorenzaccio_, 230. [117] _Ibid._, 227. [118] _Japan_, 20. [119] Harnack, _Dogmengesch._ (3rd ed.), I, 319. [120] Van Duyl, _Beschavingsgeschiedenis van het Nederl. Volk_, 237. [121] _De Anima_, 30. [122] Boissier, _Relig. Rom._, I, 239.