148 SCIENCE AND CULTURE vi 



classical learning spread and flourished. Those 

 who possessed it prided themselves on having 

 attained the highest culture then within the reach 

 of mankind. 



And justly. For, saving Dante on his solitary 

 pinnacle, there was no figure in modern literature 

 at the time of the Renascence to compare with 

 the men of antiquity ; there was no art to com- 

 pete with their sculpture ; there was no physical 

 science but that which Greece had created. 

 Above all, there was no other example of perfect 

 intellectual freedom of the unhesitating accept- 

 ance of reason as the sole guide to truth and the 

 supreme arbiter of conduct. 



The new learning necessarily soon exerted a 

 profound influence upon education. The language 

 of the monks and schoolmen seemed little better 

 than gibberish to scholars fresh from Virgil and 

 Cicero, and the study of Latin was placed upon a 

 new foundation. Moreover, Latin itself ceased to 

 afford the sole key to knowledge. The student 

 who sought the highest thought of antiquity, 

 found only a second-hand reflection of it in 

 Roman literature, and turned his face to the full 

 light of the Greeks. And after a battle, not 

 altogether dissimilar to that which is at present 

 being fought over the teaching of physical 

 science, the study of Greek was recognised as an 

 essential element of all higher education. 



Thus the Humanists, as they were called, won 



