70 Making of the Complete Citizen
himself one of the greatest of modern humanists, set forth
the spirit of the Renaissance : “After centuries of intel-
lectual poverty, men entered once more into possession of
the poetry and the eloquence, the wisdom and the wit, be-
queathed by ancient Greece and Rome. The period of
this revival was one in which the general tone of morality
was low; and cynicism, bred partly of abuses in the Church,
had well nigh paralyzed the restraining power of religion.
Some of the humanists were pagans, not as Seneca was but
as Petronius Arbiter; and, far from suffering in public es-
teem, enjoyed the applause of princes and prelates. Not
a little that was odious or shameful occasionally marked
their conduct and disfigured their writings. But it is hardly
needful to observe that such exponents of humanism were
in no way representative of its essence, or even of its in-
evitable conditions in a corrupt age. . . . The German
mind, earnest and intellectually practical, had not the
Italian’s delight in beauty of literary style and form, still
less his instinctive sympathy with the pagan spirit. . . .
The first period of humanism in Germany presents a strongly
marked character of its own, wholly different from the
Italian. So far as concerns the main current of intellectual
and literary interests, the German Renaissance is the Ref-
ormation.”1
No further evidence is needed in respect of the British
attitude towards the Renaissance than the mention of the
names of Colet, Sir Thomas More, Spenser, Milton, and
George Buchanan. Religious freedom was breaking through
the crust of ecclesiasticism, an adventurous spirit quicken-
ing what it touched with new life.
In our present world the remark is often made that by
the process of enlightenment religion is gradually lessening
ɪ Cambridge Modern History, I, 568.