But though both fame and infamy
sound louder here than elsewhere, we are not helped thereby in forming
an adequate moral estimate of the people.
What eye can pierce the depths in which the character and fate of
nations are determined?--in which that which is inborn and that which
has been experienced combine to form a new whole and a fresh nature?--
in which even those intellectual capacities which at first sight we
should take to be most original are in fact evolved late and slowly?
Who can tell if the Italian before the thirteenth century possessed
that flexible activity and certainty in his whole being--that play of
power in shaping whatever subject he dealt with in word or in form,
which was peculiar to him later? And if no answer can be found to these
questions, how can we possibly judge of the infinite and infinitely
intricate channels through which character and intellect are
incessantly pouring their influence one upon the other. A tribunal
there is for each one of us, whose voice is our conscience; but let us
have done with these generalities about nations. For the people that
seems to be most sick the cure may be at hand; and one that appears to
be healthy may bear within it the ripening germs of death, which the
hour of danger will bring forth from their hiding-place.
Morality and Immorality
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the civilization of the
Renaissance had reached its highest pitch, and at the same time the
political ruin of the nation seemed inevitable, there were not wanting
serious thinkers who saw a connexion between this ruin and the
prevalent immorality.
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