HUMANISM (from human, OK, Fr. humain, from Lat. humanus, relating to man, from howo, OLat. bongo, man; connected with AS. yuma, man, Gk. x0d.fv, ehthiin, Skt. ksam, earth). A name applied to the literary movement at the close of the Middle Ages, whose object was the revival of the pagan learning of classical an tiquity. The humanists from the beginning divided into two divergent schools, one of which sought to engraft the classical learning on the tree of Christianity, while the other endeavored to revive not merely the literature of classical antiquity but, through this, the pagan spirit of the ancient heathen cults. The first humanistic movement began in the fourteenth century in Italy, the political and social develop ments were preparing the way for a departure from inediawal traditions. The numerous small Italian States, despotic and republican alike, fa vored the development of individuality at a time when feudalism (q.v.), still in existence in other parts of Europe, gave less opportunity for the exercise of individual activities. The ferment of Italian polities gave the individual freer play, and the sense of personal independence was rap idly tending to looser social and political ideals. Paganism in Italy, though overpowered, had never been eompletely exterminated. It had lived on in popular legend and retrospective pride of race, and in countless assoeiations connected with the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, and other historic !muniments. But these survivals from ancif-nt home were an insignifieant moment in mediawal Italian culture; the pagan past did not s(brionslv influence men's minds till new social and political conditions had prepared the way for the revival of classical ideals. (See RENAls SA NCI:. ) The exile of the Papal See from Rome for nearly three-quarters of a century (see MI cNos) must also have acted as a removal of the great check against the recrudescence of, paganism. In the fourteenth century all Italy was astir with the now life. Dante, as is shown in his homage to Vergil, felt the new im pulse. Petrareh, who may be regarded as the first Christian humanist, threw himself into the van of the new movement. His passion for an
tiquity and his intolerance of eertain forms of mediawalism were boundless. The devoted great energy to the discovery and rescue of Latin manuscripts, to the eolleetion of old Roman coins and other antiquities, and to scathing denuncia tion of s•holastie philosophy, jurisprudence, and medieine. But while the modiawalist had looked forward to an immortality heyond the grave, the pagan humanist would he satisfied with nothing less than an earthly immortality, achieved by poetry like Verg,il's and prose like Cieero's. And as the literary style of the Augustan age (q.v.) became the sole model for the writer, so the spirit of antiquity, with its sensuous attitude toward life and nature, its unqualified secularity, its abandonment to the charm of things seen and temporal, controlled the humanists' thought and conduct.
A second humanistic movement—more proper ly called humanitarianism—came to its culmina tion in Comte's (q.v.) worship of humanity. It finds in man the highest and worthiest object of esteem and reverence, and is hostile to any theory which places the divine outside of the human. It is differentiated from the pagan Renaissance attitude most markedly by its placing the golden age of man's development not in the past, but in the future.
Consult: Burckhardt, Die Cultur der Renais sance in 'Wien (Basel, 1860; 3d ed. 1877-78), English translation by Middlemore (London, 1878 and 1891) ; Voigt, Die Wiederbelebsing des klassisehen Altertums oder das erste Jahrhun dert des Humanisntus (Berlin, 1859; 2d ed. 1880 81) ; Symonds's (q.v.) works on the Renaissance, epitomized by Pearson in A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy (New York, 1893) ; Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance (New York, 1893 ) ; Jebh, humanism in Education, Romanes Lecture (London and New York, 1899) ; Pastor, History of the Popes (London, 1891) ; Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England (New York, 1902) ; Gasquet, The Eve of the I?eformation. (London, 1898).