Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/247

 VERY age has a philosophy of life, which reaches and affects, in greater or less degree, the thought and action of all of its members. To the centuries before Petrarch the world was a place in which to prepare for a life beyond; the noblest subject of thought was theology; the saving of the soul was the one important task. The centuries since have realised in some measure that the present life is precious in itself, and is not to be thus subordinated. This shifting of the view is of immense significance; and it is owing to Petrarch, more than to any other one man.

The process was, after all, not so much a shifting as a blending, a powerful modification of the mediæval notions by those of the ancient world. The ancients frankly delighted in sensuous beauty, and felt an unrestrained joy in mere living, and trusted nature and the natural impulses. They were thoroughly human, and the return to them humanised 227