But it is in Italy, in the fifteenth century, that the interest of the
Renaissance mainly lies,--in that solemn fifteenth century which can
hardly be studied too much, not merely for its positive results in the
things of the intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art,
its special and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic
charm, but for its general spirit and character, for the ethical
qualities of which it is a consummate type.
The various forms of intellectual activity which together make up the
culture of an age, move for the most part from different
starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same
generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously
illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is
solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in
intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious
life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the open
places of the world, are each of them confined to its own circle of
ideas, and those who prosecute either of them are generally little
curious of the thoughts of others.
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