ery of organic life defeats analysis. Whether the
subject of our inquiry be a germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the
commencement of a new religion, or the origination of a new disease, or
a new phase in civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to
state the conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point
out what are its manifestations. In doing so, moreover, we must be
careful not to be carried away by words of our own making. Renaissance,
Reformation, and Revolution are not separate things, capable of being
isolated; they are moments in the history of the human race which we
find it convenient to name; while history itself is one and continuous,
so that our utmost endeavors to regard some portion of it, independently
of the rest, will be defeated.

A glance at the history of the preceding centuries shows that, after the
dissolution of the fabric of the Roman Empire, there was no possibility
of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races which had deluged
Europe had to absorb their barbarism; the fragments of Roman
civilization had either to be destroyed or assimilated; the Germanic
nations had to receive culture and religion from the effete people they
had superseded. It was further necessary that the modern nationalities
should be defined, that the modern languages should be formed, that
peace should be secured to some extent, and wealth accumulated, before
the indispensable _milieu_ for a resurrection of the free spirit of
humanity could exist. The first nation which fulfilled these conditions
was the first to inaugurate the new era. The reason why Italy took the
lead in the Renaissance was that Italy possessed a language, a favorable
climate, political freedom, and commercial prosperity, at a time when
other nations were still semibarbarous. Where the human spirit had been
buried in the decay of the Roman Empire, there it arose upon the ruins
of that Empire; and the papacy--called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead
Roman Empire, seated, throned, and crowned, upon the ashes thereof--to
some extent bridged over the gulf between the two periods.

Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real quality of the
Renaissance was intellectual--that it was the emancipation of the reason
for the modern world--we may inquire how feudalism was related to it.
The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration
before the idols of the Church--dogma and authority and scholasticis