Thence One Might Argue That The Cult Of Credulity Implied By These Saintly Biographies Is Responsible For This Laxness, For The General Disregard Of Veracity.

I doubt it.

I am not inclined to blame the monkish saint-makers for this particular trait; I suspect that for fifteen francs you could have bought a first-class witness under Pericles. Southerners are not yet pressed for time; and when people are not pressed for time, they do not learn the time-saving value of honesty. Our respect for truth and fair dealing, such as it is, derives from modern commerce; in the Middle Ages nobody was concerned about honesty save a few trading companies like the Hanseatic League, and the poor mediaeval devil (the only gentleman of his age) who was generally pressed for time and could be relied upon to keep his word. Even God, of whom they talked so much, was systematically swindled. Where time counts for nothing, expeditious practices between man and man are a drug in the market. Besides, it must be noted that this churchly misteaching was only a fraction of that general shattering which has disintegrated all the finer fibres of public life. It stands to reason that the fragile tissues of culture are dislocated, and its delicate edges defaced, by such persistive governmental brutalization as the inhabitants have undergone. None but the grossest elements in a people can withstand enduring misrule; none but a mendacious and servile nature will survive its wear and tear. So it comes about that up to a few years ago the nobler qualities which we associate with those old Hellenic colonists - their intellectual curiosity, their candid outlook upon life, their passionate sense of beauty, their love of nature - all these things had been abraded, leaving, as residue, nothing save what the Greeks shared with ruder races.

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