An Introduction to Political Philosophy

state rests and the consequent justification for its existence. The error was born in the later Middle Ages, received wide publicity by reason of the popularity of the " social contract " theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was not laid to rest till the middle of the nineteenth century. Political Philosophy in the Middle Ages.? " The Middle Ages were as compared with the ages that preceded and the ages that followed essentially ch. vii. unpolitical," says Bryce in a well-known passage. This is true in the sense that neither in political theory nor practice was there any original constructive work. " Feudalism was the one great secular institution to which those times gave birth," and feudalism was the natural result of the insecurity of life and property in troubled times. Yet it has been pointed out that there is no critical analysis of feudalism to be found in any mediaeval writer, and it would be possible to read most if not all of the political writers of the Middle Ages and gain no inkling of the fact that feudalism was not only universal throughout western Europe, but that it pervaded every phase of life and human relationship, social, legal, political, religious?even marital and parental. The Teutonic people that dominated western Europe during this period may be compared to children learning their lessons from their elders. Statecraft and government came to them from the classical ages through the Roman Empire?their teacher. They...