ABSTRACT
In the perspective of history, Humanism is an adventure, not a discipline, a program of liberty, not a doctrine of regimentation. It did change from adventure to discipline and from program to doctrine, but the change was a sea-change, from a life into a recollection. From a symbol of new life to a decoration of old conventions—this is the movement of Humanism in the transition of the expansive mood of the Renaissance into the reticulated one of the 18th century, with its precise and finished formalities in manners, poetry, landscape and spirit, its whole "neo-classic" character. Its Humanism needed to hold its precarious place against old privilege and new power, against authority, against science, against industry. There are signs, in spite of horror, in spite of the humiliations of the "price-system" and the retrogression of war, that a fresh phase of this perennial Humanism is beginning, the phase of our industrial age.
