The Renaissance brought in New Conceptions of Life and the World.--The Renaissance effected in the Christian West an intellectual and moral revolution so profound and so far-reaching in its consequences that it may well be likened to that produced in the ancient world by the incoming of Christianity. The New Learning was indeed a New Gospel. Like Christianity, the Renaissance revealed to men another world, another state of existence; for such was the real significance, to the men of the revival, of the discovery of the civilization of classical antiquity. Through this discovery they learned that this earthly life is worth living for its own sake; that this life and its pleasures need not l)e contemned and sacrificed in order to make sure of eternal life in another world; and that man may think and investigate and satisfy his thirst to know without endangering the welfare of his soul.
[The longings and the superstitious fears of men in the age of transition between medieval and modern times is well epitomized in the tradition of Dr. Faustus. " That legend," says Symonds, " tells us what the men upon the eve of the Revival longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned their minds toward the past. The secret of enjoyment and the source of strength possessed by the ancients allured them; but they believed that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide of the soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing all the knowledge of the age, he sold himself to the devil, in order that his thirst for experience might be quenched, his grasp upon the world be strengthened, and the ennui of his activity be soothed. His first use of his dearly-bought power was to make blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent yearnings of the spirit in the Middle Ages,--its passionate aspiration, its conscience stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of impotent knowledge and irrational dogmatisms."--Revival of Learning, p. 53 (ed. 1855).]
These discoveries made by the men of the Renaissance gave a vast impulse to the progress of the human race. They inspired humanity with a new spirit, a spirit destined in time to make things new in all realms,--in the realm of religion, of politics, of literature, of art, of science, of invention, of industry. Some of these changes and revolutions we shall briefly indicate in the remaining sections of this chapter. To follow them out more in detail in all the territories of human activity and achievement will be our aim in later chapters, where we propose to trace the course of the historical development through the centuries of the Modern Age,--the great age opened by the Renaissance.