He who studies the human mind with attention, and forms a deliberate judgment on the intellectual powers which set people and states in motion, may, perhaps, find some proofs of this assertion in the following observations:--at that time, the advancement of the hierarchy was, in most countries, extraordinary; for the church acquired treasures and large properties in land, even to a greater extent than after the crusades; but experience has demonstrated, that such a state of things is ruinous to the people, and causes them to retrograde, as was evinced on this occasion. After the cessation of the Black Plague, a greater fertility in women was everywhere remarkable--a grand phenomenon, which, from its occurrence after every destructive pestilence, proves to conviction, if any occurrence can do so, the prevalence of a higher power in the direction of general organic life. Marriages were, almost without exception, prolific; and double and treble births were more frequent than at other times; under which head, we should remember the strange remark, that after the “great mortality” the children were said to have got fewer teeth than before; at which, contemporaries were mightily shocked, and even later writers have felt surprise. If we examine the grounds of this oft-repeated assertion, we shall find that they were astonished, to see children cut twenty, or at most, twenty-two teeth, under the supposition that a greater number had formerly fallen to their share.[106] Some writers of authority, as, for example, the physician Savonarola,[107] at Ferrara, who probably looked for twenty-eight teeth in children, published their opinions on this subject. Others copied from them, without seeing for themselves, as often happens in other matters which are equally evident; and thus the world believed in the miracle of an imperfection in the human body which had been caused by the Black Plague. [106] We may take this view of the subject from _Guillelm de Nangis_ and _Barnes_, if we read them _with attention_. _Olof Dalin_, Loc. cit. [107] Practica de aegritudinibus a capite usque ad pedes, Papiae, 1486, fol. Tract, VI. c. vii. The people gradually consoled themselves after the sufferings which they had undergone; the dead were lamented and forgotten; and in the stirring vicissitudes of existence, the world belonged to the living.[108] [108] “Darnach, da das Sterben, die Geiselfarth, Römerfarth, Judenschlacht, als vorgeschrieben steht, ein End hatte, da hub die Welt wieder an zu leben und fröhlich zu seyn, und machten die Männer neue Kleidung.” Limburg Chronik, p. 26. After this when, as was stated before, the mortality, the processions of the Flagellants, the expeditions to Rome, and the massacre of the Jews, were at an end, the world begun to revive and be joyful, and the people put on new clothing. CHAPTER V. MORAL EFFECTS.