onardo da Vinci and
Leon-Battista Alberti, masters of all arts and sciences, travelled,
well-bred, at home in the universe,--thoroughly accomplished men of the
world, with senses and faculties in complete harmonious development. It
is an age full of splendid figures; whatever growth there was in any
country came now to its flowering-time.

The drawback is want of purpose. This splendor looks only to show; there
is no universal aim, no motive except whim,--the whims of men of talent,
or the whim of the crowd. For the approbation of the Church is
substituted the applause of cultivated society, a wider convention, but
conventional still. This is the frivolous side of the Renaissance, not
its holding light the old traditions, but that for the traditions it
rejected it had nothing but tradition to substitute. But if this
declaration of independence was at first only a claim for license, not
for liberty, this is only what was natural, and may be said of
Protestantism as well. Protestantism, too, had its orthodoxy, and has
not even yet quite realized that the _private judgment_ whose rights it
vindicated does not mean personal whim, and therefore is not fortified
by the assent of any man or body of men, nor weakened by their dissent,
but belongs alone to thought, which is necessarily individual, and at
the same time of universal validity; whereas, personality is partial,
belongs to the crowd, and to that part of the man which confounds him
with the crowd. Were the private judgment indeed private, it would have
no rights. Of what consequence the private judgments of a tribe of apes,
or of Bushmen? This reference to the bystanders means only an appeal
from the Church; it is at bottom a declaration that the truth is not a
miraculous exception, a falsehood which for this particular occasion is
called truth, but the substance of the universe, apparent everywhere,
and to all that seek it. The perception must be its own evidence, it
must be true for us, now and here. We have no right to blame the
Renaissance painters for their love of show, for Art exists for show,
and the due fulfilment of its purpose, bringing to the surface what was
dimly indicated, must engage it the more thoroughly in the superficial
aspect, and make all reference to a hidden ulterior meaning more and
more a mere pretence. What was once Thought has now become form, color,
surface; to make a mystery of it would be thoughtlessness or hypocrisy.

The shortcoming i