be incapable of vice,
but abhorrent of it; and this is what even the best men of the
Renaissance rarely were.

Such a state of moral chaos there has constantly been when an old effete
mode of thought required to be destroyed. Such work is always attended,
in greater or less degree, by this subversion of all recognized
authority, this indifference to evil, this bold tasting of the
forbidden. In the eighteenth century France plays the same part that was
played in the fifteenth by Italy: again we meet the rebellion against
all that has been consecrated by time and belief, the toleration of
evil, the praise of the abominable, in the midst of the search for the
good. These two have been the great fever epochs of modern history;
fever necessary for a subsequent steady growth. Both gave back truth to
man, and man to nature, at the expense of temporary moral uncertainty
and ruthless destruction. The Renaissance reinstated the individual in
his human dignity, as a thinking, feeling, and acting being; the
Eighteenth Century reconstructed society as a homogeneous free
existence; both at the expense of individual degradation and social
disorder. Both were moments of ebullition in which horrible things rose
to the surface, but after which what remained was purer than it had ever
been before.

This is no plea for the immorality of the Renaissance: evil is none the
less evil for being inevitable and necessary; but it is nevertheless
well that we should understand its necessity. It certainly is a terrible
admission, but one which must be made, that evil is part of the
mechanism for producing good; and had the arrangement of the universe
been entrusted to us, benevolent and equitable people of an enlightened
age, there would doubtless have been invented some system of evolution
and progression differing from the one which includes such machinery as
hurricanes and pestilences, carnage and misery, superstition and
license, Renaissance and Eighteenth Century. But unfortunately Nature
was organized in a less charitable and intelligent fashion; and, among
other evils required for the final attainment of good, we find that of
whole generations of men being condemned to moral uncertainty and error
in order that other generations may enjoy knowledge peacefully and
guiltlessly. Let us remember this, and let us be more generous towards
the men who were wicked that we might be enlightened. Above all, let us
bear in mind, in judging the Renaissan