“History” (said the great Michelet in a phrase which I am never tired of repeating) “should be a resurrection of the flesh.” What you need for true history is by no means an agreement with the philosophy of the time which you describe (you may be wholly opposed to that philosophy) but at least a full comprehension of it and an understanding that those who worked its human affairs were men fundamentally the same as ourselves. Humanity has not essentially differed from the beginning of recorded, or, indeed, of geological time. Man as man (the only thing which concerns history, or, indeed, the morals and philosophy of mankind) has been the same since first he appears fully developed upon the earth. But in the case of Western Europe during the Middle Ages the thing is far more intimate. We are dealing with men who are not only of our genus but of our very stock; wholly of our particular blood, our own fathers, our own family. What is more, in those ancestors we should take our greatest pride. For never did our race do better or more thoroughly, never was it more faithfully _itself_, than in the years between the First Crusade and the effects of the Black Death: 1100-1350. Those three long lifetimes were the very summit of the European story. Now I say that to treat properly of this affair it is not indeed necessary to agree with the philosophy of those men—that is, with their religion. It is certainly not necessary to agree with the details of their action, as, for example, their lapses into cruelty on the one hand or their fierce sense of honour on the other. We may be baser, or more reasonable, or more gentle, or more lethargic than they, and yet remain true historians of them. But what one must have if one is to be an historian at all, and not a mere popular writer, repeating what the public of “the best sellers” wants to have told to it, is a knowledge of the spirit of our ancestors _from within_. Now this can only be obtained in one fashion, to wit, by accurate, detailed, concrete record. Find out _what_ happened and say it. Proportion is of course essential; but to an honest man proportion will come of itself from a sufficient reading, and only a dishonest man will after a sufficient reading warp proportion and make a brief by picking out special points. The trouble is that this period has been dealt with in the past without minute research. There has been plenty of pretence at such research, but most of it was charlatan. Let me take as a specific instance by way of example: