In conclusion one might ask: how much of this Italian
Humanism remains alive in the modern age, since Humanism
wholly gravitates around the geocentric myth, theologized
science and philosophy, the universal papal unity, and remains
outside the realm of the vernaculars and of the printing press?
Can we still think of classic-Christian Rhetoric as a magical,
unique bridge built by God for his descent into the history of
mankind -- after Columbus' discovery, beyond the ocean, of
other nations endowed with other cultures and traditions and
self-decreed historical missions, after Galileo's discovery of
other planets wheeling through pace, populated (who knows)
by other racial stocks, illumined by other wisdoms? Is plurality
of the world still a heresy? It was in opposition to it that
Ciceronian literature ("sapiens a principio mundus est et deus
habendus est") was reconsecrated by Savonarola (a supposed
adversary) ¹ when he voiced the desire that "only the fittest
minds should be selected for the purpose of studying, in addi-
tion to the theology, the aforesaid science (secular literature)
so that the sophisms of the heretics may be refuted." Savonarola
proclaimed: "The sciences of the world are merely shadows of
the only real wisdom which is inherent in the faith of Christ."
After so much study of nature, what is the meaning of the
word Humanitas?

If one were willing to eliminate the intermediate shadings,
one could compare Humanism and Encyclopedism by choosing
among the writings of the former a little treatise "De excellen-
tia hominis," and among those of the latter, the anecdote of
the man from Marseille, "Le Marseillais et le Lion" by Voltaire
. Having arrived in Africa, swollen with the pride of his
own humanitas, the man from Marseille, coming across a lion,
begins to catechize him as to the fact that man is the king of
the universe. Thereupon the lion eats him up.

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