Courteous love was avowedly a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for illusion, courteous love in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;- the balance of trade, the rights of man, the Athanasian Creed. In that sense the illusions alone were real; if the middle-ages had reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for us.