How often, and
against what passionate attacks of selfishness it won the day, we
cannot tell, and therefore no human judgement can estimate with
certainty the absolute moral value of the nation.
A force which we must constantly take into account in judging of the
morality of the more highly developed Italian of this period, is that
of the imagination. It gives to his virtues and vices a peculiar color,
and under its influence his unbridled egotism shows itself in its most
terrible shape.
The force of his imagination explains, for example, the fact that he
was the first gambler on a large scale in modern times. Pictures of
future wealth and enjoyment rose in such lifelike colors before his
eyes, that he was ready to hazard everything to reach them. The
Mohammedan nations would doubtless have anticipated him in this
respect, had not the Koran, from the beginning, set up the prohibition
against gambling as a chief safeguard of public morals, and directed
the imagination of its followers to the search after buried treasures.
In Italy, the passion for play reached an intensity which often
threatened or altogether broke up the existence of the gambler.
Florence had already, at the end of the fourteenth century, its
Casanova --a certain Buonaccorso Pitti, who, in the course of his
incessant journeys as merchant, political agent, diplomatist and
professional gambler, won and lost sums so enormous that none but
princes like the Dukes of Brabant, Bavaria, and Savoy, were able to
compete with him.
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