“Beauty was believed to afford at least some glimpse of a transcendental
existence. This goes far to explain the humanist cult of beauty and makes plain that
humanism was, above everything else, fundamentally an aesthetic movement. Human
experience, man himself, tended to become the practical measure of all things. The ideal
life was no longer a monastic escape from society, but a full participation in rich and
varied human relationships.
The dominating element in the finest classical culture was aesthetic
rather than supernatural or scientific. In the later Middle Ages urban intellectuals were
well on the road to the recovery of an aesthetic and secular view of life even before the
full tide of the classical revival was felt. It was only natural, then, that pagan
literature, with its emotional and intellectual affinity to the new world view, should
accelerate the existing drift toward secularism and stimulate the cult of humanity, the
worship of beauty, and especially the aristocratic attitude….”