In the fact here stated we must doubtless look for the explanation in part of the turbulent, anarchical character, ethically viewed, of the period which immediately followed the downfall of ancient civilization, and which saw the creation, out of Roman and barbarian elements, of the new Romano-German world. In the migrations and settlements of the German conquerors in the Roman provinces, and in the mixture of races which there took place, there resulted necessarily, on the one side, a break-up of all the old tribal relations which formed the basis of the morality of the barbarians, and, on the other side, the destruction of all the restraints and conventions which had formed the bulwark and stay of the more refined, if less simple and pure, morality of the Romans. With the old moral codes discredited, with ancestral ethical ideals disintegrated,[658] men stood, to use Bagehot’s phrase, not between races only but also between moralities, and the historical ethical evolution was broken by what has been aptly called a moral interregnum. The epoch covering the interval between the destruction of the Roman governmental system in the West in the fifth century and the establishment of a semblance of social order by Charlemagne toward the end of the eighth century, presents, according to the concurrent view of all chroniclers and historians of the period, one of the most appalling spectacles of moral anarchy afforded by the records of human history. In the midst of this moral chaos, however, a new moral world was forming. Gradually, under various influences, racial, cultural, and religious, there was taking shape and form, through a fusion of different ethical elements, a new moral ideal, the ideal of knighthood, which for an epoch--throughout the crusading centuries--was to absorb a large part of the moral enthusiasm of Christendom, and to determine in great measure the character of the enterprises of the age. Since one of the influences which produced this great transformation in the Christian ideal was the creed and moral code of Islam, we shall in our next chapter turn aside from following the ethical evolution among the European peoples to watch for a space the rise and progress of this new faith whose martial ethics was destined to leave so deep an impress upon the moral ideal of Christianity. CHAPTER XIV THE ETHICS OF ISLAM: A MARTIAL IDEAL I. RELIGIOUS BASIS OF THE MORAL SYSTEM [Sidenote: Introduction: Islam creates a new conscience in the Arab race]