The charm and romance of the Eastern life gave the impetus; the increased freedom introduced a more spiritual element, and then the quickened imagination worked subtly as well as rapidly upon minds and hearts already stirring with new ideas and emotions. Happily one can inspire a great deal more than one actually communicates.
But the land which keeps its women shut away in harems and treats them as personal property could scarcely teach the ideas of chivalry to the West. Woman does not owe her redemption to the followers of Mahomet. The paradox is unthinkable. In fact, she really owes it to herself: to some power of intuition, a quick understanding of the bearing of things, of the magic of ideas as distinct from established facts which enabled her to win a steadily widening influence just at that favourable moment when the new thoughts were in the air: honour, loyalty, generosity, fair play. Then perhaps she was inspired to put in her claim for fair play, and when once that notion was really started in men's minds it seemed to take fire with generous swiftness.
In any case, it is to the dreamers—men or women—of the tenth or eleventh century, probably to both, that we owe these saving ideals. Practical men of the preceding ages doubtless laughed at them as sentimental or subversive. Happy the land that still breeds ideas at which the practical man laughs!
CHAPTER VII
THE GAY SCIENCE
"Li douz cossire
Qem don amors soven
Domnam fan dire
De vos maint vers plazem
Pessan remire