ABSTRACT
The earlier revolts against the powers which oppressed Europe have borne the aspect of religious movements. As in the theocratic East every stirring of the mind assumed the form of a ‘new religion,’ so in Mediaeval Europe, under the same incubus, social revolt wore the aspect of religious reformation. Intellectually the tyranny of Bibliolatry and the smug fanaticism of Hebraised Christianity have probably been more blighting in their effects upon the European mind than the dictatorship of the Roman Curia. Owing to the inability of unarmed English rulers to enforce law and order, England’s laws and England’s political order became an envied example to the world, while Europe still lay sunk under the weight of Mediaeval absolutism. The Great War which dealt the fatal blow to the unstable equilibrium of European industrial civilisation was the inevitable consequence of the structure of that civilisation grafted upon the fragmented state-system of barbaric Europe.
