The dilemma of the liberated

Chapter I

_“As is well known, the word humanist was applied, first in the
Italy of the fifteenth century, and later in other European
countries, to the type of scholar who was not only proficient in
Greek and Latin, but who at the same time inclined to prefer the
humanity of the great classical writers to what seemed to him the
excess of divinity in the mediævals. This contrast between humanity
and divinity was often conceived very superficially. However, the
best of the humanists were not content with opposing a somewhat
external imitation of the Ciceronian or Virgilian elegance to the
scholastic carelessness of form. They actually caught a glimpse
of the fine proportionateness of the ancients at their best. They
were thus encouraged to aim at a harmonious development of their
faculties in this world rather than at an otherworldly felicity.
Each faculty, they held, should be cultivated in due measure
without one-sidedness or over-emphasis, whether that of the ascetic
or that of the specialist.”—Irving Babbitt in Humanism and
America_.