destined to serve as the model and ideal for the whole
western world.

The distance between the works of the Greek artists and
poets--between Homer, Sophocles, and Phidias on the one hand, and the
Alexandrian Theocritus and Kallimachos and the Pergamos sculptures on
the other--is greater than lies between the _Nibelungenlied_ and the
Minnesingers, and Dante and Petrarch. In both cases one finds oneself
in a new world of thought and feeling, where each and all bears the
stamp of change, in matters political and social as well as artistic.
If, for example, by the aid of Von Helbig's researches,[2] we conjure
up a picture of the chief points in the history of Greek culture, we
are astonished to see how almost every point recurred at the
Renaissance, as described by Burckhardt.

The chief mark of both epochs was individualism, the discovery of the
individual. In Hellenism it was the barriers of race and position
which fell; in the Renaissance, the veil, woven of mysticism and
delusion, which had obscured mediaeval faith, thought, and feeling.
Every man recognized himself to be an independent unit of church,
state, people, corporation--of all those bodies in which in the
Middle Ages he had been entirely merged.

Monarchical institutions arose in Hellenism; but the individual was
no longer content to serve them only as one among many; he must needs
develop his own powers. Private affairs began to preponderate over
public; the very physiognomy of the race shewed an individual stamp.

After the time of Alexander the Great, portrait shewed most
marked individuality. Those of the previous period had a certain
uniform expression; one would have looked in vain among them for
the diversities in contemporary types shewn by comparing
Alexander's vivid face full of stormy energy, Menander's with its
peculiar look of irony, and the elaborate savant-physiognomy of
Aristotle. (HELBIG.)

And Burckhardt says:

At the close of the thirteenth century Italy began to swarm with
individuality; the charm laid upon human personality was
dissolved, and a thousand figures meet us each in its own special
shape and dress.... Despotism, as we have already seen, fostered
in the highest degree the individuality, not only of the tyrant
or Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he protected or
used as his tools--the secretary, minister, poet, or companion.

Political indifference