some presentiment of his future fame, for, with a faith in omens
characteristic of her time, she believed that a strange circumstance had
happened at the time of Pico's birth--the appearance of a circular flame
which suddenly vanished away, on the wall of the chamber where she lay.
He remained two years at Bologna; and then, with an inexhaustible,
unrivalled thirst for knowledge, the strange, confused, uncritical
learning of that age, passed through the principal schools of Italy and
France, penetrating, as he thought, into the secrets of all ancient
philosophies, and many eastern languages. And with this flood of
erudition came the generous hope, so often disabused, of reconciling the
philosophers with each other, and all alike with the Church. At last he
came to Rome. There, like some knight-errant of philosophy, he offered
to defend nine hundred bold paradoxes, drawn from the most opposite
sources, against all comers. But the pontifical court was led to suspect
the orthodoxy of some of these propositions, and even the reading of the
book which contained them was forbidden by the Pope. It was not until
1493 that Pico was finally absolved, by a brief of Alexander the Sixth.
Ten years before that date he had arrived at Florence; an early instance
of those who, after following the vain hope of an impossible
reconciliation from system to system, have at last fallen back
unsatisfied on the simplicities of their childhood's belief.

The oration which Pico composed for the opening of this philosophical
tournament still remains; its subject is the dignity of human nature,
the greatness of man. In common with nearly all medieval speculation,
much of Pico's writing has this for its drift; and in common also with
it, Pico's theory of that dignity is founded on a misconception of the
place in nature both of the earth and of man. For Pico the earth is the
centre of the universe: and around it, as a fixed and motionless point,
the sun and moon and stars revolve, like diligent servants or ministers.