In itself it is neither good nor bad, but necessary; within it
has grown up a modern standard of good and evil-- a sense of moral
responsibility--which is essentially different from that which was
familiar to the Middle Ages.
But the Italian of the Renaissance had to bear the first mighty surging
of a new age. Through his gifts and his passions, he has become the
most characteristic representative of all the heights and all the
depths of his time. By the side of profound corruption appeared human
personalities of the noblest harmony, and an artistic splendor which
shed upon the life of man a lustre which neither antiquity nor
medievalism could or would bestow upon it.
Religion in Daily Life
The morality of a people stands in the closest connection with its
consciousness of God, that is to say, with its firmer or weaker faith
in the divine government of the world, whether this faith looks on the
world as destined to happiness or to misery and speedy destruction. The
infidelity then prevalent in Italy is notorious, and whoever takes the
trouble to look about for proofs, will find them by the hundred. Our
present task, here as elsewhere, is to separate and discriminate;
refraining from an absolute and final verdict.
The belief in God at earlier times had its source and chief support in
Christianity and the outward symbol of Christianity, the Church.
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