In the early years of the fourteenth century a new spirit became manifest in art. It showed itself, for example, in the sculpture that embellishes Amiens and Chartres, in the bronze doors of the Baptistry of Florence by Andrea Pisano, and in the painting and sculpture of Giotto. It is supremely manifested in the poetry of Dante. All of these works belong to the Gothic period. The soul in them is still composed of the faith and knowledge of the Mediæval mind and imagination; but the form in which the soul is enshrined has become less generalised, abstract, and symbolical; it has become more individualised, concrete, naturalistic. In a word, it has become more humanised. It represents a change of attitude toward life; a disposition to regard the world, no longer exclusively or chiefly in relation to a future existence, but as the scene of human endeavour, human aspirations, human emotions. It represents a renewed consciousness on the part of Man of his own Humanity. In a word, the thought of the world was gradually evolving from the scholastic attitude of the Middle Ages to the _Humanistic_ spirit, which was the breath of life of the Renaissance. At first the movement groped. The thinker and the artist, while intent upon the study of life, were ignorant of exact methods of study. These were gradually learned through the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman classics. The Rebirth, in fact, which is metaphorically suggested in the term Renaissance, was the result of the spread of the humanistic spirit and the “Revival of Learning”; and, in recognition of this, Classic literature was called “Litteræ Humaniores,” the students of the Classics were called Humanists, and Humanism is the term often applied to the whole movement. The movement was one that affected the whole fabric of civilisation, for it involved no less than the self-emancipation of the human intellect and will. The human will began to free itself from the shackles of dogmatism and the domination of absolute authority, whether exercised by the Church or by civil rulers. The human intellect gradually freed itself from the subtleties and sophistries of the “Schoolmen,” ceased to speculate on abstract questions, such as the language spoken by the angels, and how many angelic beings could be supported on the point of a pin, and began to apply itself to the exact study of what was actually within the reach of human experience or research. And for this exactness of study the Revival of Learning laid the foundation, because the students of the Classics learned to collate the various manuscripts, comparing them critically so as to discover the correct reading, and were also obliged to compile grammars and dictionaries--in fact, to construct from the ground up, a fabric of reliable knowledge and at the same time a system of education. It was a process that encouraged both exact and critical research.