So  these  classics  did  not  produce  the  Renaissance ;  that  lies
deep  in  the  undercurrents  of  life  and  experience,  as  we  have
seen.  But  once  the  age  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  human
joy  and  natural  beauty,  it  needed  the  support  and  the  criti-
cism of  other  experiences,  of  other  ages ;  its  own  particular
experiences  must  be  universalized.  It  must  be  freed  from
the  invidious  opinion  of  the  Middle  Ages  that  particular
experiences  are  unreal  and  unsafe,  and  it  must  be  made  to
meet  even  the  demands  of  the  logic  of  Aristotle  that  that
which  is  to  be  depended  upon  as  real  must  be  shown  to  be,
or  to  have  been,  the  experience  of  some  other  human  being,
some  other  group  or  age.    The  classics  prove  themselves


THE  RENAISSANCE  185

really  worth  while,  the  finest  educational  materials  the
world  knows,  when  they  are  thus  used  to  support,  to  criti-
cise, to  fulfill,  to  universalize  a  mood,  an  experience,  which
otherwise  would  die  of  starvation  or  become  impossible
through  undisciplined  excesses.  The  age  of  the  great  hu-
manists in  Italy  is  one  of  the  great  educational  periods  of
the  world.  The  hungry  soul  of  the  race,  starved  for  a
thousand  years  or  fed  on  the  husk  of  dry  theological  dis-
cussion, came  to  this  new  feast  of  life  and  beauty  with
almost  terrifying  avidity.  Men  came  face  to  face  with  the
fundamental  realities  of  experience;  never  again  would
they  go  back  to  the  old  position  of  subordination  to  the
machinery  of  a  system,  at  least  not  completely.
