as admired. And such knowledge of antiquities in
addition to all this! Illimitable was the craving for and illimitable
the power to absorb what is extraordinary in real life. This was one of
the principal characteristics of the spirit of the Renaissance. These
minds never had their desired share of striking incidents, curious
details, rarities and anomalies. There was, as yet, no symptom of that
mental dyspepsia of later periods, which can no longer digest reality
and relishes it no more. Men revelled in plenty.

And yet, were not Erasmus and his fellow-workers as leaders of
civilization on a wrong track? Was it true reality they were aiming at?
Was their proud Latinity not a fatal error? There is one of the crucial
points of history.

A present-day reader who should take up the _Adagia_ or the
_Apophthegmata_ with a view to enriching his own life (for they were
meant for this purpose and it is what gave them value), would soon ask
himself: 'What matter to us, apart from strictly philological or
historical considerations, those endless details concerning obscure
personages of antique society, of Phrygians, of Thessalians? They are
nothing to me.' And--he will continue--they really mattered nothing to
Erasmus's contemporaries either. The stupendous history of the sixteenth
century was not enacted in classic phrases or turns; it was not based on
classic interests or views of life. There were no Phrygians and
Thessalians, no Agesilauses or Dionysiuses. The humanists created out of
all this a mental realm, emancipated from the limitations of time.

And did their own times pass without being influenced by them? That is
the question, and we shall not attempt to answer it: to what extent did
humanism influence the course of events?

In any case Erasmus and his coadjutors greatly heightened the
international character of civilization which had existed throughout the
Middle Ages because of Latin and of the Church. If they thought they
were really making Latin a vehicle for daily international use, they
overrated their power. It was, no doubt, an amusing fancy and a witty
exercise to plan, in such an international _milieu_ as the Parisian
student world, such models of sports and games in Latin as the
_Colloquiorum formulae_ offered. But can Erasmus have seriously thought
that the next generation would play at marbles in Latin?

Still, intellectual intercourse undoubtedly became very easy in so wide
a circle as had not been w