represents the more
perfect condition. The chief examples of the relation of involution and
evolution are the principles in which science is involved and out of which
it is unfolded; the unit, which is related to numbers in a similar way;
the spirit and the cognitive operations; God and his creatures. However
obscure and unskillful this application of the idea of development may
appear, yet it is indisputable that a discovery of great promise has been
made, accompanied by a joyful consciousness of its fruitfulness. Of the
numberless features which point backward to the Middle Ages, only one need
be mentioned, the large space taken up by speculations concerning the
God-man (the whole third book of the _De Docta Ignorantia_), and by those
concerning the angels. Yet even here a change is noticeable, for the
earthly and the divine are brought into most intimate relation, while in
Thomas Aquinas, for instance, they form two entirely separate worlds. In
short, the new view of the world appears in Nicolas still bound on every
hand by mediaeval conceptions. A century and a half passed before the
fetters, grown rusty in the meanwhile, broke under the bolder touch of
Giordano Bruno.

[Footnote 1: The attention of our philosopher was called to the natural
sciences, and thus also to geography, which at this time was springing into
new life, by his friend Paul Toscanelli, the Florentine. Nicolas was the
first to have the map of Germany engraved (cf. S. Ruge in _Globus_, vol.
lx., No. I, 1891), which, however, was not completed until long after his
death, and issued in 1491.]

[Footnote 2: On the modern elements in his theory of the state and of
right, cf. Gierke, _Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht_, vol. iii. Sec. II,
1881.]

%2. The Revival of Ancient Philosophy and the Opposition to it%.

Italy is the home of the Renaissance and the birthplace of important
new ideas which give the intellectual life of the sixteenth century its
character of brave endeavor after high and distant ends. The enthusiasm
for ancient literature already aroused by the native poets, Dante (1300),
Petrarch (1341), and Boccaccio (1350), was nourished by the influx of Greek
scholars, part of whom came in pursuance of an invitation to the Council of
Ferrara and Florence (1438) called in behalf of the union of the Churches
(among these were Pletho and his pupil Bessarion; Nicolas Cusanus was one
of the legates invited), while part were fugitives from Consta