The second of the great changes that characterize the Renaissance was the development of the idea of man as an individual. All through the Middle Ages, except perhaps in the case of rulers, men and women counted in the life of the world around them, not so much as separate influences as a part of the system into which they were born or absorbed. In early days the tribe accepted its members’ acts, whether good or bad, as something that was the concern of all to be atoned for, supported, or avenged, as a public duty. Still more strongly was this attitude expressed in family affairs, as in the numerous ‘vendettas’, or feuds like those of the Welfs and Waiblingen, or of ‘the Blacks’ and ‘Whites’ in Florence. Turning from racial ties to social, we find mediaeval associations of all kinds holding a man bound, not by his own personal choice or discretion, but by the decision of the group to which he happened to be attached. The feudal system was never complete enough in practice to make a good example of this bondage, but in theory from the tenant-in-chief to the landowner lowest in the social scale there was a settled rule of life, dictating the duties and responsibilities of lord and vassal. Still more was this binding rule true of that greatest of all mediaeval corporations--monasticism, that demanded from its sons and daughters absolute obedience in the annihilation of self. St. Bernard, whose personality was so strong that he could not remain hidden amongst the mass of his fellows, was yet, we remember, angry with Abelard for this above all other failings--that he had set up his individual judgement as a test of life. In Abelard, as in Arnold of Brescia, lay the first stirrings of the independent modern spirit that at the Renaissance was to shake the foundations of the mediaeval world. Besides monasticism there were other associations--the universities and the class corporations, merchant guilds such as the North German Hansa, and smaller city guilds, such as the ‘Greater’ and ‘Lesser Arts’ in Florence, comprising groups of lawyers, fishmongers, &c. All these last maintained a standard of uniformity, regulating not only hours of work, rate of pay, nature of employment, scale of contributions, like a modern trade union, but went much farther, interfering in the life of each individual member to insist on what he should wear in public and how he might spend the money he had earned. It was a spirit of benevolent slavery that held sway so long as the strivings of the individual mind were overborne by a sense of helplessness in the face of ignorance or by the weight of tradition.