Even when they only write for a
few friends, like Francesco Vettori, they feel an inward need to utter
their testimony on men and events, and to explain and justify their
share in the latter.
And yet, with all that is characteristic in their language and style,
they were powerfully affected by antiquity, and, without its influence,
would be inconceivable. They were not humanists, but they had passed
through the school of humanism and have in them more of the spirit of
the ancient historians than most of the imitators of Livy. Like the
ancients, they were citizens who wrote for citizens.
Antiquity as the Common Source
We cannot attempt to trace the influence of humanism in the special
sciences. Each has its own history, in which the Italian investigators
of this period, chiefly through their rediscovery of the results
attained by antiquity, mark a new epoch, with which the modern period
of the science in question begins with more or less distinctness. With
regard to philosophy, too, we must refer the reader to the special
historical works on the subject. The influence of the old philosophers
on Italian culture will appear at times immense, at times
inconsiderable; the former, when we consider how the doctrines of
Aristotle, chiefly drawn from the Ethics and Politics--both widely
diffused at an early period--became the common property of educated
Italians, and how the whole method of abstract thought was governed by
him; the latter, when we remember how slight was the dogmatic influence
of the old philosophies, and even of the enthusiastic Florentine
Platonists, on the spirit of the people at large.
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