102 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



But even of more value than the language was the 

 free spirit of enquiry it enshrined, and the impulse 

 toward study of all kinds that " humane letters " 

 gave once more to Europe after centuries of gloomy 

 medievalism. Though the stress laid on the teachings 

 of the Greek philosophers had dangers of its own, the 

 humanists prepared the way for the coming revival 

 of science, and to them is due the chief part in the 

 enlargement of the mental horizon which alone made 

 science possible. Without them, men with scientific 

 minds would never have thrown off their internal 

 fetters of theological preconception ; without them, 

 external obstacles might have proved insurmountable. 

 We seem to see the essential inward union of science, 

 waiting to be born, and religion, struggling to be free, 

 in such men as the Florentine patriot and martyr, 

 Girolamo Savonarola (1453-1498), who, grandson of 

 a skilful Paduan physician, was himself trained for 

 the medical profession, and the high-born Pico del 

 Mirandola (1463-1494), the disciple of Savonarola, 

 whose eager studies and learned wanderings resulted 

 in a great mystical exposition of the process of creation 

 and led him to pronounce the startling opinion that 

 Origen was more probably saved than damned by the 

 verdict of the Council of Constantinople. 



For one bright interval, culminating with Pope 

 Leo X. (1513-1521), the Vatican itself was a vitalizing 

 centre of the ancient culture. But the capture of 

 Rome by the Imperial troops in 1527 broke up this 

 new Roman world of intellectual and artistic life, and 

 soon afterwards the Papacy, by reversing its previous 

 policy of liberal guidance, and opposing blindly when 

 it was no longer able to understand or to control, 



