Let us begin by saying a few words about that moral force which was then the strongest bulwark against evil.The highly gifted man of that day thought to find it in the sentiment of honour.This is that enigmatic mixture of conscience and egotism which often survives in the modern man after he has lost, whether by his own fault or not, faith, love, and hope.This sense of honour is compatible with much selfishness and great vices, and may be the victim of astonishing illusions; yet, nevertheless, all the noble elements that are left in the wreck of a character may gather around it, and from this fountain may draw new strength.It has become, in a far wider sense than is commonly believed, a decisive test of conduct in the minds of the cultivated Europeans of our own day, and many of those who yet hold faithfully by religion and morality are unconsciously guided by this feeling in the gravest decisions of their lives.
It lies without the limits of our task to show how the men of antiquity also experienced this feeling in a peculiar form, and how, afterwards, in the Middle Ages, a special sense of honour became the mark of a particular class.Nor can we here dispute with those who hold that conscience, rather than honour, is the motive power.It would indeed be better and nobler if it were so; but since it must be granted that even our worthier resolutions result from 'a conscience more or less dimmed by selfishness,' it is better to call the mixture by its right name.It is certainly not always easy, in treating of the Italian of this period, to distinguish this sense of honour from the passion for fame, into which, indeed, it easily passes.Yet the two sentiments are essentially different.
There is no lack of witnesses on this subject.One who speaks plainly may here be quoted as a representative of the rest.We read in the recently published 'Aphorisms' of Guicciardini: 'who esteems honour highly succeeds in all that he undertakes, since he fears neither trouble, danger, nor expense; I have found it so in my own case, and may say it and write it; vain and dead are the deeds of men which have not this as their motive.' It is necessary to add that, from what is known of the life of the writer, he can here be only speaking of honour and not of fame.Rabelais has put the matter more clearly than perhaps any Italian.We quote him, indeed, unwillingly in these pages.What the great, baroque Frenchman gives us is a picture of what the Renaissance would be without form and without beauty.But his description of an ideal state of things in the Thelemite monastery is decisive as historical evidence.In speaking of his gentlemen and ladies of the Order of Free Will, he tells us as follows:
'En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce que vouldras.Parce que gens liberes, bien nayz, bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies honnestes, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui tousjours les poulse...faictz tueux, et retire de vice: lequel ilz nommoyent honneur.'
This is that same faith in the goodness of human nature which inspired the men of the second half of the eighteenth century, and helped to prepare the way for the French Revolution.Among the Italians, too, each man appeals to this noble instinct within him, and though with regard to the people as a whole--chiefly in consequence of the national disasters-- judgements of a more pessimistic sort became prevalent, the importance of this sense of honour must still be rated highly.If the boundless development of individuality, stronger than the will of the individual, be the work of a historical providence, not less so is the opposing force which then manifested itself in Italy.How often, and against what passionate attacks of selfishness it won the day, we cannot tell, and therefore no human judgement can estimate with certainty the absolute moral value of the nation.
A force which we must constantly take into account in judging of the morality of the more highly developed Italian of this period, is that of the imagination.It gives to his virtues and vices a peculiar color, and under its influence his unbridled egotism shows itself in its most terrible shape.
The force of his imagination explains, for example, the fact that he was the first gambler on a large scale in modern times.Pictures of future wealth and enjoyment rose in such lifelike colors before his eyes, that he was ready to hazard everything to reach them.The Mohammedan nations would doubtless have anticipated him in this respect, had not the Koran, from the beginning, set up the prohibition against gambling as a chief safeguard of public morals, and directed the imagination of its followers to the search after buried treasures.
In Italy, the passion for play reached an intensity which often threatened or altogether broke up the existence of the gambler.
Florence had already, at the end of the fourteenth century, its Casanova --a certain Buonaccorso Pitti, who, in the course of his incessant journeys as merchant, political agent, diplomatist and professional gambler, won and lost sums so enormous that none but princes like the Dukes of Brabant, Bavaria, and Savoy, were able to compete with him.That great lottery-bank, which was called the Court of Rome, accustomed people to a need of excitement, which found its satisfaction in games of hazard during the intervals between one intrigue and another.We read, for example, how Franceschetto Cibo, in two games with the Cardinal Raffaello Riario, lost no less than 14,000ducats, and afterwards complained to the Pope that his opponent has cheated him.Italy has since that time been the home of the lottery.
