ABSTRACT
In the last lecture we singled out one of the two great strains of educational thought which developed during the Renaissance: this is the one which finds its most characteristic expression in the work of Rabelais. What distinguishes him from everyone else is the gigantic nature of the ideal to which he is aspiring. He communicates a lust for life which is both intense and varied, he seems to aspire to a sort of humanity whose powers — all of whose powers — would be developed to a degree which seems inconceivable when we contemplate the spectacle of the average man. It is a question of liberating human nature which an artificial education has confined within narrow limits, and which needs to be extended in all directions. But there is one particular faculty which we must strive to exercise and to exalt above all others because this faculty pre-eminently expresses what we are in ourselves: this is our cognitive faculty, the capacity for knowledge in all its forms. Man does not truly realise his nature unless he extends the empire of his knowledge as far as possible, unless he expands his consciousness so that it embraces the whole universe. He is only truly absolutely happy in that state of exultation whereby the intellect finds itself in possession of the truth; and it is in the delight of intoxication with knowledge that he should seek the supreme state of blessedness. This is a notion, it is true, that we might be tempted at first sight to regard as purely fanciful, a sort of poetic reverie in which Rabelais’ imagination took pleasure. But what proves that we are dealing here with something quite different from what a single individual might have made up, is the multiplicity of the men of the Renaissance who yearned for this ideal and who strove to realise it. As we shall shortly be seeing, this was not the only ideal which preoccupied men’s minds at that time; but it does hover over the whole era and certainly reflects a major feature of it.
