But in Italy, at any rate, it left his conscience, his religion, his sociological ideas, the deeper problems which concern his relation to the universe, the subtler secrets of the world in which he lives, untouched.
These _novi homines_ of the later Renaissance, as Bacon called them, these _novatori_, as they were contemptuously styled in Italy, prepared the further emancipation of the intellect by science.

They asserted the liberty of thought and speech, proclaimed the paramount authority of that inner light or indwelling deity which man owns in his brain and breast, and rehabilitated nature from the stigma cast on it by Christianity.

What the Bible was for Luther, that was the great Book of Nature for Telesio, Bruno, Campanella.

The German reformer appealed to the reason of the individual as conscience; the school of southern Italy made a similar appeal to intelligence.

In different ways Luther and these speculative thinkers maintained the direct illumination of the human soul by God, man's immediate dependence on his Maker, repudiating ecclesiastical intervention, and refusing to rely on any principle but earnest love of truth.
Had this new phase of the Italian Renaissance been permitted to evolve itself unhindered, there is no saying how much earlier Europe might have entered into the possession of that kingdom of unprejudiced research which is now secured for us.