stages of the moral and intellectual culture of the ancient world. However this may be, and we shall have more to say about this presently, the civilization of the Middle Ages was made up on the one hand of elements drawn from the later Empire, and on the other of characteristics and principles which seem to have belonged to the Barbarian races themselves. With the end of the sixth century the ancient world had passed away and the mediaeval world had begun, and we have to consider the nature and movement of the new order, or rather we have to consider some of its elements, and their development, especially during the period from the end of the tenth century to the end of the thirteenth, during which it reached its highest level. We have to pass over the great attempt of the ninth century, for we can only deal with a small part of a large subject, and we shall only deal with a few aspects of it, and chiefly with the development of the spiritual conception of life which we call religion, with the reconstruction of the political order of society, with the beginning of a new intellectual life and the pursuit of truth, and with the development under new forms of the passion for beauty. * * * * * I have been compelled to warn you against the romantic superstition that the Middle Ages were specifically religious, and yet it is quite true that the first aspect of mediaeval life which compels our attention is exactly the development of the sense of the significance of the spiritual quality of life. This was the first great task of the men of the Middle Ages, and this was in a real sense their achievement; but not as contradicting the characteristic developments of the Hellenic civilization, but rather as completing and fulfilling it. It is indeed a singular superstition that the Hellenic world was lacking in spiritual insight, but I need only refer you to Miss Stawell's lecture, as serving to show you how great and how real this was. It really was not a mistake when an honest but rather stupid man like Justin Martyr, and the more acute and penetrating minds of the Alexandrian Fathers like Clement and Origen, thought that they heard the authentic accents of the 'Word' of God in the great philosophers of Greece, and especially in Plato.