"The larger part of all that the ancient world had gained seemed to be lost. But it was so in appearance only. Almost, if not quite, every achievement of the Greeks and the Romans in thought, in science, in law, in the practical arts, is now a part of our civilization, either among the tools of our daily life or in the long-forgotten or perhaps disowned foundation-stones which have disappeared from sight because we have built some more complete structure upon them, a structure which never could have been built, however, had not these foundations first been laid by some one. All of real value which had been gained was to be preserved in the world's permanent civilization. For the moment it seemed lost, but it was only for the moment, and in the end the recovery was to be complete. By a long process of education, by its own natural growth, under the influence of the remains of the ancient civilization, by no means small or unimportant, which worked effectively from the very first, by widening experience and outside stimulus, the barbarian society which resulted from the conquest was at last brought up to a level from which it could comprehend the classic civilization, at least to a point to see that it had very much still to learn from the ancients, and then, with an enthusiasm which the race has rarely felt, it made itself master in a generation or two of all that it had not known of the classic work--of its thought and art and science--and from the beginning thus secured, advanced to the still more marvelous achievements of modern times."[200] =Feudalism.= Feudalism was a form of society and government which arose during the Middle Ages and became one of the great institutions of that time, whose legal principles and social ideals are still prevalent in the fundamentals of law and society of the present. "It is itself a crude and barbarous form of government in which the political organization is based on the tenure of land; that is, the public duties and obligations, which ordinarily the citizen owes to the state, are turned into private and personal services which he owes to his lord in return for land which he has received from him."[201] The feudal system was not confined to Europe, for it existed as well in Japan and in Central Africa and among the Mohammedans, for if the conditions that underlie this system arise then human nature, whatever the place or time, is likely to take on this form of government.