286 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



isin has succeeded, has fulfilled its function, the 

 individual can begin to assert himself. 



Contrast this critical period, finding its expres 

 sion equally in the art of the Renaissance, the re 

 vival of learning, the Protestant Reformation, and 

 political democracy, with Athens in the time of 

 Socrates. Then individuals felt their own social 

 life disintegrated, dissolving under their very feet. 

 The problem was how the value of that social life 

 was to be maintained against the external and in 

 ternal forces that were threatening it. The prob 

 lem was on the side neither of the individual nor of 

 progress ; save as the individual was seen to be an 

 intervening instrument in the reconstruction of the 

 social unity. But with the individual of the four 

 teenth century, it was not his own intimate com 

 munity life which was slipping away from him. It 

 was an alien and remote life which had finally be 

 come his own ; which had passed over into his own 

 inner being. The problem was not how a unity 

 of social life should be conserved, but what the in- 

 * dividual should do with the wealth of resources of 

 which he found himself the rightful heir and ad 

 ministrator. The problem looked out upon the 

 future, not back to the past. It was how to create 

 a new order, both of modes of individual conduct 

 and forms of social life that should be the appro 

 priate manifestations of the vigorous and richly 

 endowed individual. 



