The towers of this great House in which dwelt the soul of Europe touch the year 1300. Dante has devised his vision; Chartres lives upon the Ile-de-France; Saint Bernard in Clairvaux and Saint Francis in Assisi have filled the world with brothers; chivalry has brought war and love into the sacred symphony of Europe; the German foray is Crusade; lust of the flesh bears the Mystery of Tristan and Isolt, of Abélard and Héloïse. Now, the divine Structure nobly curves back to earth. By 1400, Europe dwells once more in the bowels of discord. By 1500, European man is a congeries of atomic wills: the unity of Christ has scattered into exploration, industry and science. But in this destructive act, Europe is as creative as when the Fathers builded, out of the Prophets, Plato, Paul, the puissant Organism of medieval Europe. To tear down such a body is as divine an act as to build it. Systole and diastole are equal. Schopenhauer and Kant are brothers before God with Aquinas. The long ages of deliquescence from that peak of Rome rightly seem rich to our enlisted eyes since they are as full of saints and heroes consecrate to our work, as were the anchorites of the Thebaid to theirs. For this is the mysterious law of history: that the divine is present in death even as in life, in the Nay equally with the Yea. God does not build His revelation upon earth and then turn away His face while man tears down. He is there, too, in the destruction. He was there when the Prophets created the Jew: He was there also when the Pharisees and the Essenic Christ destroyed the Jew. He was there when the saints and Fathers builded Catholic Rome. He was there when Luther, Calvin, Goethe, Blake burned Rome away. We see Him in the despair of Dostoievski no less than in the joy of Saint Francis. It was while the Jewish world drooped and retched, that the gospels of Jesus flowered. From that nadir was prepared the Dantean zenith. Once more an ebb of the Tide. Spain has become a befuddled chaos. Home from her mad anachronistic dream of establishing on earth what Europe has given up for centuries, she is already rotting. And now, from the bitterness of her awareness rises a new Word. It, too, is entextured of contemporary failure, and is implicit of revelation. * * * * * Spain did not conform with the Middle Ages of the north. Roman Iberia received its dominant invasion from the south, whereas in Italy, Gaul and Britain the coefficient of transformation from Rome to Holy Rome was the same Teuton element which held the eastern marches beyond Roman rule. León, Aragon and Castile were medieval in so far as the Visigoth was strong in them. But even here, contact was as great with the Moslem foe of the south as with the brother northward.