Early in the sixteenth century Machiavelli had inaugurated a new method for political philosophy; Pompanazzo at Padua and Telesio at Cosenza disclosed new horizons for psychology and the science of nature.

It seemed as though the Renaissance in Italy were about to assume a fresh and more serious character without losing its essential inspiration.

That evolution of intellectual energy which had begun with the assimilation of the classics, with the first attempts at criticism, with the elaboration of style and the perfection of artistic form, now promised to invade the fields of metaphysical and scientific speculation.

It is true, as we have seen, that the theological problems of the German Reformation took but slight hold on Italians.

Their thinkers were already too far advanced upon the paths of modern rationalism to feel the actuality of questions which divided Luther from Zwingli, Calvin from Servetus, Knox from Cranmer.