122. Those who devoted themselves to the study and imitation first of Roman, and later of Greek literature, are commonly called _humanists_, a name derived from the Latin word _humanitas_; that is, culture, especially in the sense of literary appreciation. They no longer paid much attention to Peter Lombard's _Sentences_. They had, indeed, little taste for theology, but looked to Cicero for all those accomplishments which go to the making of a man of refinement. [Sidenote: Reason for the enthusiastic study of the classics.] The _humanities_, as Greek and Latin are still called, became almost a new religion among the Italian scholars during the century following Petrarch's death. In order to understand their exclusive attention to ancient literature we must remember that they did not have a great many of the books that we prize most highly nowadays. Now, every nation of Europe has an extensive literature in its own particular tongue, which all can read. Besides admirable translations of all the works of antiquity, there are innumerable masterpieces, like those of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Goethe, which were unheard of four centuries ago. Consequently we can now acquaint ourselves with a great part of the best that has been written in all ages without knowing either Latin or Greek. The Middle Ages enjoyed no such advantage. So when men began to tire of theology, logic, and Aristotle's scientific treatises, they naturally turned back with single-hearted enthusiasm to the age of Augustus, and, later, to that of Pericles, for their models of literary style and for their ideals of life and conduct. [Sidenote: Pagan tendencies of the Italian humanists.] A sympathetic study of the pagan authors led many of the humanists to reject the mediæval view of the relation of this life to the next.[225] They reverted to the teachings of Horace and ridiculed the self-sacrifice of the monk. They declared that it was right to make the most of life's pleasures and needless to worry about the world to come. In some cases the humanists openly attacked the teachings of the Church, but generally they remained outwardly loyal to it and many of them even found positions among the officers of the papal curia. [Sidenote: The classics become the basis of a liberal education.] Humanism produced a revolution in the idea of a liberal education. In the sixteenth century, through the influence of those who visited Italy, the schools of Germany, England, and France began to make Latin and Greek literature, rather than logic and other mediæval subjects, the basis of their college course. It is only within the last generation that Latin and Greek have begun to be replaced in our colleges by a variety of scientific and historical studies; and many would still maintain, with the humanists of the fifteenth century, that Latin and Greek are better worth studying than any other subjects. [Sidenote: Ignorance of Greek in the Middle Ages.]