The men who led this weighty intellectual movement burned with the
passionate ardour of discoverers, the fiery enthusiasm of confessors.
They stood alone, sustained but little by intercourse among themselves,
and wholly misunderstood by the people round them. Italy, sunk in
sloth, priest-ridden, tyrant-ridden, exhausted with the unparalleled
activity of the Renaissance, besotted with the vices of slavery and
slow corruption, had no ears for spirit-thrilling prophecy. The Church,
terrified by the Reformation, when she chanced to hear those strange
voices sounding through 'the blessed mutter of the mass,' burned the
prophets. The State, represented by absolute Spain, if it listened to
them at all, flung them into prison. To both Church and State there was
peril in the new philosophy; for the new philosophy was the first
birth-cry of the modern genius, with all the crudity and clearness, the
brutality and uncompromising sincerity of youth. The Church feared
Nature. The State feared the People. Nature and the People--those
watchwords of modern Science and modern Liberty--were already on the
lips of the philosophers.

It was a philosophy armed, errant, exiled; a philosophy in chains and
solitary; at war with society, authority, opinion; self-sustained by
the prescience of ultimate triumph, and invincible through the sheer
force of passionate conviction. The men of whom I speak were conscious
of Pariahdom, and eager to be martyred in the glorious cause. 'A very
Proteus is the philosopher,' says Pomponazzo: 'seeking to penetrate the
secrets of God, he is consumed with ceaseless cares; he forgets to
thirst, to hunger, to sleep, to eat; he is derided of all men; he is
held for a fool and irreligious person; he is persecuted by
inquisitors; he becomes a gazing-stock to the common folk. These are
the gains of the philosopher; these are his guerdon. Pomponazzo's words