Word: humanist
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...city of God, and Virgil was interesting to him only because they led him through the universe. But Petrarch thought of the present world, the life of to-day, and the classics were interesting to him as expressions of men's lives at that time. Petrarch was a "humanist." Dante still clung to the religious beliefs and drawbacks of mediaeval times...
Since the Renaissance there have been four principal motives for search and study of medeaeval ideals. First the humanist desire to perfect the literary style of the day. Second the patriotic instinct regarding a country's past. Third, the fancifal interest in Chivalry of the Romantic movement, and fourth the desire of jurists to trace the development of law. Beside these dilletantiism led to the revival of the trouvier and troubadours...
...topics which he treated-logic, ethics, metaphysics, the history of Philosophy, the history of the United States, political economy, theology, The Bible, Latin, poetry, mathematics-attests his belief in the unity of knowledge and in the value of all its parts for personal culture. He was a humanist, not a specialist. The nature of man was his central interest, but he prized all studies as illuminating this, and as showing the relation of finite man to an infinite personality...