Padua and Bologna—Arabian and Greek Commentators—Life of Pietro Pomponazzi—His Book on Immortality—His Controversies—Pomponazzi's Standpoint—Unlimited Belief in Aristotle—Retrospect over the Aristotelian Doctrine of God, the World, the Human Soul—Three Problems in the Aristotelian System—Universals—The First Period of Scholastic Speculation—Individuality—The Second Period of Scholasticism—Thomas Aquinas—The Nature of the Soul—New Impulse given to Speculation by the Renaissance—Averroism—The Lateran Council—Is the Soul Immortal?—Pomponazzi reconstructs Aristotle's Doctrine by help of Alexander of Aphrodisias—The Soul is Material and Mortal—Man's Place in Nature—Virtue is the End of Man—Pomponazzi on Miracles and Spirits—His Distinction between the Philosopher and the Christian—The Book on Fate—Pomponazzi the Precursor—Coarse Materialism—The School of Cosenza—Aristotle's Authority Rejected—Telesio—Campanella—Bruno—The Church stifles Philosophy in Italy—Italian Positivism

429 CHAPTER XVII.

CONCLUSION. Retrospect—Meaning of the Renaissance—Modern Science and Democracy—The Preparation of an Intellectual Medium for Europe—The Precocity of Italy—Servitude and Corruption—Antiquity and Art—The Italian Provinces—Florence—Lombardy and Venice—The March of Ancona, Urbino, Umbria—Perugia—Rome—Sicily and Naples—Italian Ethnology—Italian Independence on the Empire and the Church—Persistence of the Old Italic Stocks—The New Nation—Its Relation to the Old—The Revival of Learning was a National Movement—Its Effect on Art—On Literature—Resumption of the Latin Language—Affinities between the Latin and Italian Genius—Renascence of Italian Literature combined with Humanism—Greek Studies comparatively Uninfluential—The Modern Italians inherited Roman Qualities—Roman Defects—Elimination of Roman Satire—Decay of Roman Vigor—Italian Realism—Positivism—Sensuousness—Want of Mystery, Suggestion, Romance—The Intellectual Atmosphere—A Literature of Form and Diversion—Absence of Commanding Genius—Lack of Earnestness—Lack of Piety—Materialism and Negation—Idyllic Beauty—The Men of the Golden Age—The Cult of Form—Italy's Gifts to Europe—The Renaissance is not to be Imitated—Its Importance in Human Development—Feudalism, Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution 488

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APPENDICES.

No. I.—Italian Comic Prologues	533
No. II.—Passages Translated from Folengo and Berni, which Illustrate the Lutheran Opinions of the Burlesque Poets	536
No. III.—On Palmieri's "Città di Vita"	548
INDEX	555

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RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE ORLANDO FURIOSO.

Ariosto's Satires make us know the man intus et in cute—to the very core. The lyrics have a breadth and amplitude of style that mark no common master of the poet's craft. Yet neither the Satires nor the Lyrics reveal the author of the Furioso. The artist in Ariosto was greater than the man; and the Furioso, conceived and executed with no reference to the poet's personal experience, enthroned him as the Orpheus of his age. The Orlando Furioso gave full and final expression to the cinque cento, just as the Divina Commedia uttered the last word of the middle ages. The two supreme Italian singers stood in the same relation to their several epochs. Dante immortalized medieval thoughts and aspirations at the moment when they were already losing their reality for the Italian people. Separated from him by a short interval of time, came Petrarch, who substituted the art of poetry for the prophetic inspiration; and while Petrarch was yet singing, Boccaccio anticipated in his multifarious literature the age of the Renaissance. Then the evolution of Italian literature was interrupted by the classical revival; and when Ariosto appeared, it was his duty to close the epoch which Petrarch had inaugurated and Boccaccio had determined, by a poem investing Boccaccio's world, the sensuous world of the Renaissance, with the refined artistic