Even in this quiet
retreat," he went on, "I hear much talk of abuses and of the need for
reform; and I often think that if they who rail so loudly against
existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their
source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with
its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring
it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find,
if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and
remedying the abuses they discover."
This view of history was one so new in the abate Crescenti's day that it
surprised Odo with the revelation of unsuspected possibilities. How was
it that among the philosophers whose works he had studied, none had
thought of tracing in the social and political tendencies of the race
the germ of wrongs so confidently ascribed to the cunning of priests and
the rapacity of princes? Odo listened with growing interest while
Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of
feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner's need of protection
against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative
had been the outcome of the king's intervention between his great
vassals and the communes. The discouragement which had obscured Odo's
outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery
that in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing
with present evils.
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