ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the end of the Renaissance and the crisis of humanism. The history of the Renaissance period, which extends over several centuries, does not strictly coincide with the 'Renaissance' itself. The early Renaissance had encouraged spiritual creativeness, but, in the period that followed, natural man, becoming more and more isolated from his spiritual self, lost control of his personality and thus of an inexhaustible creative source. The spread of democracy is closely connected with the decline of the Renaissance to which it dealt a death-blow. For the Renaissance and humanism were essentially aristocratic. The decline and crisis of humanism are likewise manifest in the sphere of moral life. Goethe's humanism was based upon religion. Following his authentic humanism, illuminated by the clear image of nature, the humanism of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries becomes more and more of a shadow of its true self.
