follow their doctrines into a reformation of
the church. They exaggerated the knowledge of the ancients and the
prestige of classical opinion until it seemed to them that anything
ancient must be true and authoritative. They transferred to what was
ancient the irrational reverence which had been paid to the doctrines of
the church, and paid to the great classical authors the respect which
had been paid to saints.[2234] In the sixteenth century they fell into
discredit for their haughtiness, their shameful dissipation, and for
their unbelief.[2235]

+721. The humanists.+ The humanists of Italy are a class by themselves,
without historical relations. They had no trade or profession and could
make no recognized career. Their controversies had a large personal
element. They sought to exterminate each other. Three excuses have been
suggested for them. The excessive petting and spoiling they met with
when luck favored them; the lack of a guarantee for their physical
circumstances, which depended on the caprice of patrons and the malice
of rivals; and the delusive influence of antiquity, or of their notions
about it. The last destroyed their Christian morality without giving
them a substitute. Their careers were such generally that only the
strongest moral natures could endure them without harm. They plunged
into changeful and wearing life, in which exhaustive study, the duties
of a household tutor, a secretary, or a professor, service near a
prince, deadly hostility and danger, enthusiastic admiration and
extravagant scorn, excess and poverty, followed each other in confusion.
The humanist needed to know how to carry a great erudition and to endure
a succession of various positions and occupations. To these were added
on occasion stupefying and disorderly enjoyment, and when the basest
demands were made on him he had to be indifferent to all morals.
Haughtiness was a certain consequence in character. The humanists needed
it to sustain themselves, and the alternation of flattery and hatred
strengthened them in it. They were victims of subjectiveness. The
admiration of classical antiquity was so extravagant and mistaken that
all the humanists were subject to excessive suggestion which destroyed
their judgment.[2236]

+722. "Individualism."+ Recent writers on the period have emphasized the
individualism which was produced. By this is meant the emancipation of
men of talent from traditional morality, and the notion that any man