Distinguishing keenly between good and evil, they yet
are conscious of no sin. Every disturbance of their inward harmony they
feel themselves able to make good out of the plastic resources of their
own nature, and therefore they feel no repentance. The need of
salvation thus becomes felt more and more dimly, while the ambitions
and the intellectual activity of the present either shut out altogether
every thought of a world to come, or else caused it to assume a poetic
instead of a dogmatic form.
When we look on all this as pervaded and often perverted by the all-
powerful Italian imagination, we obtain a picture of that time which is
certainly more in accordance with truth than are vague declarations
against modern paganism. And closer investigation often reveals to us
that underneath this outward shell much genuine religion could still
survive.
The fuller discussion of these points must be limited to a few of the
more essential explanations.
That religion should again become an affair of the individual and of
his own personal feeling was inevitable when the Church became corrupt
in doctrine and tyrannous in practice, and is a proof that the European
mind was still alive. It is true that this showed itself in many
different ways. While the mystical and ascetical sects of the North
lost no time in creating new outward forms for their new modes of
thought and feeling, each individual in Italy went his own way, and
thousands wandered on the sea of life without any religious guidance
whatever.
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