ABSTRACT
The Renaissance, without being the reversion to paganism that it has sometimes been called, had in the main lost touch with the mysticism of a Dionysius or an Origen. A few of the most important may be traced under endless individual modifications, though it would require an elaborate analysis to treat them in adequate detail. There is the sense that Nature is penetrated by spiritual forces and possesses a kind of conscious life which may be imagined as either friendly or hostile to man. Beliefs akin to those of the Neoplatonists underlie much of the Romantic attitude to Nature. The pantheistic feeling that has such diverse expressions in Pico and Leonardo, Campanella and Bruno, reappears in many writers of the nineteenth century and passes through analogous developments. The Neoplatonists, filled with the sense of having liberated the human spirit from every hindrance to its free expansion, tended naturally to emphasize the greatness of his powers and joy of their exercise.
