Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/404

Rh 386 RENAISSANCE sophy; pieces of these men and their compeers Brunelleschi and Donatello, how even in the 15th century the minds of artists were fascinated by what survived of classic grace and science. Gradually, as the race became penetrated with antique thought, the earlier Christian motives of the arts yielded to pagan subjects. Gothic architecture, which had always flourished feebly on Italian soil, was supplanted by a hybrid Roman style. The study of Vitruvius gave strong support to that pseudo-classic manner which, when it had reached its final point in Palladio's work, overspread the whole of Europe and dominated taste during two centuries. But the perfect plastic art of Italy, the pure art of the Cinque Cento, the painting of Raphael, Da Vinci, Titian, and Correggio, the sculpture of Donatello, Michelangelo, and Sansovino, the architecture of Bra- mante, Omodeo, and the Venetian Lombardi, however much imbued with the spirit of the classical revival, takes rank beside the poetry of Ariosto as a free intelligent product of the Renaissance. That is to say, it is not so much an outcome of studies in antiquity as an exhibition of emancipated modern genius fired and illuminated by the masterpieces of the past. It indicates a separation from the Middle Ages, inasmuch as it is permanently natural. Its religion is joyous, sensuous, dramatic, terrible, but in each and all of its many-sided manifestations strictly human. Its touch on classical mythology is original, rarely imitative or pedantic. The art of the Renaissance was an apocalypse of the beauty of the world and man in unaffected spontaneity, without side thoughts for piety or erudition, inspired by pure delight in loveliness and harmony for their own sakes. to science l n the fields of science and philosophy humanism wrought 5i,?r - ~ s i m il ar important changes. Petrarch began by waging re- lentless war against the logicians and materialists of his own day. With the advance made in Greek studies scholastic methods of thinking fell into contemptuous oblivion. The newly aroused curiosity for nature encouraged men like Alberti, Da Vinci, Toscanelli, and Da Porta to make prac- tical experiments, penetrate the working of physical forces, and invent scientific instruments. Anatomy began to be studied, and the time was not far distant when Titian should lend his pencil to the epoch-making treatise of Vesalius. The Middle Ages had been satisfied with absurd and visionary notions about the world around them, while the body of man was regarded with too much suspicion to be studied. Now the right method of interrogating nature with patience and loving admiration was instituted. At the same time the texts of ancient authors supplied hints which led to discoveries so far-reaching in their results as those of Copernicus, Columbus, and Galileo. In philosophy, properly so-called, the humanistic scorn for mediaeval dulness and obscurity swept away theological metaphysics as valueless. But at first little beyond empty rhetoric and clumsy compilation was substituted. The ethical treatises of the scholars are deficient in substance, while Ficino's attempt to revive Platonism betrays an uncritical conception of his master's drift. It was some- thing, however, to have shaken ofi the shackles of ecclesi- astical authority ; and, even if a new authority, that of the ancients, was accepted in its stead, still progress was being made toward sounder methods of analysis. This is notice- able in Pomponazzo's system of materialism, based on the interpretation of Aristotle, but revealing a virile spirit of disinterested and unprejudiced research. The thinkers of southern Italy, Telesio, Bruno, and Campanella, at last opened the two chief lines on which modern speculation has since moved. Telesio and Campanella may be termed the predecessors of Bacon. Bruno was the precursor of the idealistic schools. All three alike strove to disengage their minds from classical as well as ecclesiastical authority, proving that the emancipation of the will had been accom- plished. It must be added that their writings, like evrrv other product of the Renaissance, except its purest poetry and art, exhibit a hybrid between mediaeval and modern ten- dencies. Childish ineptitudes are mingled with intuitions of maturest wisdom, and seeds of future thought germinate in the decaying refuse of past systems. Humanism in its earliest stages was uncritical. It to cri absorbed the relics of antiquity with omnivorous appetite, cism; and with very imperfect sense of the distinction between worse and better work. Yet it led in process of time to criticism. The critique of literature began in the lecture room of Politian, in the printing-house of Aldus, and in the school of Vittorino. The critique of Roman law started, under Politian's auspices, upon a more liberal course than that which had been followed by the powerful but narrow- sighted glossators of Bologna. Finally, in the court of Naples arose that most formidable of all critical engines, the critique of established ecclesiastical traditions and spurious historical documents. Valla by one vigorous effort destroyed the False Decretals and exposed the Dona- tion of Constantino to ridicule, paving the way for the polemic carried on against the dubious pretensions of the papal throne by scholars of the Reformation. A similar criticism, conducted less on lines of erudition than of persiflage and irony, ransacked the moral abuses of the church and played around the very foundations of Chris- tianity. This was tolerated with approval by men who repeated Leo X.'s witty epigram : " What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us ! " The same critical and philosophic spirit working on the materials of history produced a new science, the honours of which belong to Machiavelli. He showed, on the one side, how the history of a people can be written with a recognition of fixed prin- ciples, and at the same time with an artistic feeling for personal and dramatic episodes. On the other side, he addressed himself to the analysis of man considered as a political being, to the anatomy of constitutions and the classification of governments, to the study of motives under- lying public action, the secrets of success and the causes of failure in the conduct of affairs. The unscrupulous rigour with which he applied his scientific method, and the sinister deductions he thought himself justified in drawing from the results it yielded, excited terror and repulsion. Nevertheless, a department had been added to the intellec- tual empire of mankind, in which fellow-workers, like Guicciardini at Florence, and subsequently Sarpi at Venice, were not slow to follow the path traced by Machiavelli. The object of the foregoing paragraphs has been to to show in what way the positive, inquisitive, secular, explor- tit atory spirit of the Renaissance, when toned and controlled by humanism, penetrated the regions of literature, art, philosophy, and science. It becomes at this point of much moment to consider how social manners in Italy were modified by the same causes, since the type developed there was in large measure communicated together with the new culture to the rest of Europe. The first subject to be noticed under this heading is education. What has come to be called a classical education was the immediate product of the Italian Renaissance. The universities of Bologna, Padua, and Salerno had been famous through the Middle Ages for the study of law, physics, and medicine ; and during the 15th and 16th centuries the two first still enjoyed celebrity in those faculties. But at this period no lecture-rooms were so crowded as those in which professors of antique literature and language read passages from the poets and orators, taught Greek, and commented upon the systems of philosophers. The mediaeval curriculum offered no defined place for the new learning of the Revival, which had indeed no recognized name. Chairs had therefore to II I