3. Knowledge of Classical jurisprudence, not as a model for principles of present-day validity, but as a brilliant example of how a law can develop strong and pure out of the _practical life_ of its time. Roman law has ceased to be our source for principles of eternal validity. But the relation between Roman existence and Roman law-ideas gives it a renewed value for us. We can learn from it how we have to build up _our_ law out of _our_ experiences. CHAPTER IV CITIES AND PEOPLES (A) THE SOUL OF THE CITY About the middle of the second millennium before Christ, two worlds lay over against one another on the Ægean Sea. The one, darkly groping, big with hopes, drowsy with the intoxication of deeds and sufferings, ripening quietly towards its future, was the Mycenæan. The other, gay and satisfied, snugly ensconced in the treasures of an ancient Culture, elegant, light, with all its great problems far behind it, was the Minoan of Crete. We shall never really comprehend this phenomenon, which in these days is becoming the centre of research-interest, unless we appreciate the abyss of opposition that separates the two souls. The man of those days must have felt it deeply, but hardly “cognised” it. I see it before me: the humility of the inhabitant of Tiryns and Mycenæ before the unattainable _esprit_ of life in Cnossus, the contempt of the well-bred of Cnossus for the petty chiefs and their followers, and withal a secret feeling of superiority in the healthy barbarians, like that of the German soldier in the presence of the elderly Roman dignitary. How are we in a position to know this? There are several such moments in which the men of two Cultures have looked into one another’s eyes. We know more than one “Inter-Culture” in which some of the most significant tendencies of the human soul have disclosed themselves. As it was (we may confidently say) between Cnossus and Mycenæ, so it was between the Byzantine court and the German chieftains who, like Otto II, married into it--undisguised wonder on the part of the knights and counts, answered by the contemptuous astonishment of a refined, somewhat pale and tired Civilization at that bearish morning vigour of the German lands which Scheffel has described in _Ekkehard_.[130]