MENTAL EVOLUTION 147 



Angelo. Yet these great masters could never have achieved such 

 fame had not such men as Giovanni, Andrea Pisano, Cimabue, and 

 Giotto done a wonderful constructive work in developing the tech- 

 nique of art during the preceding century. These men were the 

 original pioneers who did most of the inventive work, while 

 Leonardo and Michael Angelo were the reapers. The great men 

 of the Renaissance would never have been crowned with such a 

 halo of glory if the preceding century had not been one of the 

 greatest creative periods in the whole history of art. In mediaeval 

 Italy, as in ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, Syria, and Yucatan, 

 the most striking productions of art and architecture usually 

 represented the flowering of forces which had been in action for 

 some time. 



In literature, on the other hand, there is no need of so long a 

 period to develop a high technique. In a great many countries 

 the greatest literary masterpieces belong to a period somewhat 

 preceding the artistic masterpieces. Italian literature of the 

 fourteenth century holds its own without a rival. From 1300 to 

 1310 Dante was writing his' Divine Comedy. A little later 

 Petrarch (1304-1374) was laying the foundations of the great 

 Revival of Learning which flowered not only in the Renaissance, 

 but in the Reformation. At the same time (1313-1375) Boc- 

 caccio, whose true greatness is often veiled by the coarseness of 

 some of his work, was building the reputation which places him 

 third among Italian men of letters, unless Ariosto (1474-1533) 

 has juster claim to that place. Doubtless Dante, Petrarch, and 

 Boccaccio would have been great no matter where they lived. 

 Yet may not the stimulating climate of the fourteenth century 

 have had something to do with the energy, originality, and per- 

 severance with which they worked? They, too, like the business 

 men of America, came of a race which is extremely sensitive to 

 climatic variations, and which bears in its blood the inheritance 

 of a stock whose chief development, both physical and mental, has 

 taken place under the influence of climatic crises. 



