he ancients.
Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made,
literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate
the ancients became the habit of the day. A change the most striking was
produced in the modes of thought and of life. The love of nature was
revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses.
Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from
Christianity all that it had once lost. The pagan spirit revived, its
tastes and modes of life came back again. Plato was restored to his old
place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than
Christ. With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was
regarded as a religion.

The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a
revelation. It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a
galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms. It also had the
effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false
spiritualism and an excessive idealism. From despising the human faculties,
men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal
delight in the senses and passions. The natural man was deified; but not in
the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty.
An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of
the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development
followed. Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of
indulgence. Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic
scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness. This movement
developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual
arrogance. The men who came under its influence cared more for culture
than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of
their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies. It was the desire of
Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and
helpfulness. In this his movement was wide apart from that of the
renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for
their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people. He loved man,
they loved personal development.

George Eliot shows these two influences in antagonism with each other; on
the one hand a reforming Christianity, on the other the renaissance
movement. She adm