y thought, wrote,
spoke, felt, and acted like Pagans. To the hypocrisies of obsolete
asceticism were added the affectations of anachronistic license.
Meanwhile, the national genius for art attained its fullest development,
simultaneously with the decay of faith, the extinction of political
liberty, and the anarchy of ethics. So strong was the aesthetic impulse
that it seemed for a while capable of drawing all the forces of the
nation to itself. A society that rested upon force and fraud, corroded
with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy recognizing no standard apart
from success in action and beauty in form, so conscious of its own
corruption that it produced no satirist among the many who laughed
lightly at its vices, wore the external aspect of exquisite refinement,
and was delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who understood the
contradictions of the age most deeply were the least capable of rising
above them Consequently we obtain in Machiavelli's works the ideal
picture of personal character, moving to calculated ends by
scientifically selected means, none of which are sanctioned by the
unwritten code of law that governs human progress. Cosimo's positivism
is reduced to theory. Fraud becomes a rule of conduct. Force is
advocated, when the dagger or the poisoned draught or the extermination
of a city may lead the individual straight forward to his object.
Religion is shown to be a political engine. Hypocrisy is a mask that
must be worn. The sanctities of ancient use and custom controlling
appetite have no place assigned them in the system. Action is analyzed
as a branch of the fine arts; and the spirit of the age, of which the
philosopher makes himself the hierophant, compels him to portray it as a
sinister and evil art.

In the civilization of Italy, carried prematurely beyond the conditions
of the Middle Ages, before the institutions of mediaevalism had been
destroyed or its prejudices had been overcome, we everywhere discern
the want of a co-ordinating principle. The old religion has died; but
there is no new faith. The Communes have been proved inadequate; but
there is no nationality. Practical positivism has obliterated the
virtues of a chivalrous and feudal past; but science has not yet been
born. Scholarship floods the world with the learning of antiquity; but
this knowledge is still undigested. Art triumphs; but the aesthetic
instinct has invaded the regions of politics and ethics, owing to
defective a