or recanting "his earlier criticism of ecclesiastical abuses." This judgment is both prejudiced and unjust. It is indeed certain that the book was written in the desire to dissociate himself from Luther, as well as in response to the appeal to write something against the new heresy; but it is no less certain that the book expressed a point on which Luther's scholasticism offended the humanism of Erasmus. The saying " liberum arbitrium esse nomen inane" seemed to him an "aenigma absurdum" and for this reason-it was unknown to the New Testament and the Apostolic Church. It might be Augustinian, it certainly was scholastic; but it was neither Biblical nor primitive. Erasmus, in short, wrote as a Greek and not as a Latin theologian, as a classical scholar and not as a Western divine. He could not have selected a point more characteristic of his own position. He would have the Christian religion known through its creative literature; he would not have it identified with the philosophy or theology of any school.
So far we have been occupied with the formal rather than the material side of thought; now we must consider the latter, or thought in its objective expression as at once evolved, governed, and served by the critical method.
We begin with the Latin Renaissance. Its thought grew out of the study of Classical literature, though it reversed rather than followed the sequences of the Classical mind. The one began where the other ended, in an eclectic Neo-Platonism, or a multitude of borrowed principles reduced by a speculation, more or less arbitrary, to a reasoned unity which was yet superficial; but it ended where the other began, in attempts to interpret the nature within which man lived, with a view to the better interpretation of man. Though the order of evolution was inverted, it was yet in the circumstances the only order possible. For the mind which the voice of literature awakened could only respond to a voice which was articulate and intelligible. The mind was old in speculation, though its problems were new, and its age was reflected in the solutions it successively attempted or accepted. It had been educated in schools where theology reigned while Aristotle governed; and it revolted from the governing minister out of loyalty to the reigning sovereign, whose authority extended over regions of too infinite variety to be administered by his narrow and rigid methods.
The literature which enlarged the outlook changed the mind; it could not think as it had thought before or believe as it had believed concerning the darkness and error of pagan antiquity. The light which dwelt in ancient philosophy broke upon it like an unexpected sunrise, which it saw with eyes that had been accustomed to a grey and creeping dawn. And this means, that Classical thought was seized at the point where it stood nearest to living experience, and yet formed the most expressive contrast to it. This point was where philosophy had done its
