with an incidental defence on the despised Middle Ages.
"Can any one in the world fail to comprehend," he wrote,
"that light does not nourish mankind ? That repose and
luxury and so-called freedom of thought can never make
the general happiness and destiny ? I am far from
defending those everlasting national movements and
devastations, feudal wars, monkish armies, pilgrimages,
and crusades; but I would fain explain them. And what
a spirit breathes in it all ! Ferment of human forces !
Grand cure of the entire race by means of violent exer-
cise ! If I might use so bold a figure, Fate was winding
up the great clock that had run down (doing it, to be
sure, with much noise, and not expecting the weights
to hang quietly), and how the wheels did rattle!"
A little further on, after a bitter characterisation of his
own epoch, he continues: "Be it as it may, give us back
for many reasons your reverence and superstition, your
darkness and ignorance, your disorder and rudeness of
manners; and take in return our light and our unbelief,
our nerveless coldness and refinement, our philosophic
flaccidity and human wretchedness !"

This by no means represents Herder's final attitude,
but the booklet is significant--like Goethe's warm enco-
mium of Gothic architecture, published two years earlier
--of the coming change of feeling toward the Middle
Ages.

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