d to live either without power or
without vices. Thus the conduct of men was separated from their most
serious convictions by considerations of interest and expediency, and a
moral inconsistency was developed in character. Churches were built and
foundations were multiplied, so that the masses seemed more zealous than
the popes, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century there were
bitter complaints of the decline of worship and the neglect of the
churches.[2231] We have all the phenomena of a grand breaking up of old
mores and the beginning of new ones. "It required the unbelief of the
fifteenth century to give free rein to the rising commercial energies,
and the craving for material improvement, that paved the way for the
overthrow of ascetic sacerdotalism."[2232] The new class of burghers
with capital produced a new idea of liberty to be set against the feudal
idea of liberty of nobles and ecclesiastics, and that new class became
the founders of the modern state.

+720. Classical learning a fad.+ Whatever may have been the origin of
the zeal for classical study of the late Middle Ages, it was a
remarkable example of a fad which became the fashion and very strongly
influenced the mores. It was strengthened by the revolt against the
authority of the church, and the humanism which it produced took the
place of the mental stock which the church had offered. "Humanism
effected the emancipation of intellect by culture. It called attention
to the beauty and delightfulness of nature, restored man to a sense of
his dignity, and freed him from theological authority. But in Italy, at
any rate, it left his conscience, his religion, his sociological ideas,
the deeper problems which concern his relation to the universe, the
subtler secrets of the world in which he lives, untouched."[2233] That
means that it was a fad and was insincere. There were men who were great
scholars within the standards of humanism, but the enthusiasm for art,
the zeal for Latin and Greek literature, the cooperative struggle for
exhumations and specimens, were features of a reigning fad. The
Renaissance was an affair of the upper and middle classes. It never
could spread to the masses. Classical learning came to be valued as a
caste mark. Then it became still more truly an affectation, and was
tainted with untruth. The masses were superior in the sincerity and
truthfulness of their mores by the contrast. The humanists were pagan
and profane, but did not