TRANSFORMATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL MAN. The fourteenth century was a period of still more rapid change and transformation. New objects of interest were coming to the front, and new standards of judgment were being applied. National spirit and a national patriotism were finding expression. The mediaeval man, with his feeling of personal insignificance, lack of self-confidence, "no sense of the past behind him, and no conception of the possibilities of the future before him," [2] was rapidly giving way to the man possessed of the modern spirit--the man of self-confidence, conscious of his powers, enjoying life, feeling his connection with the historic past, and realizing the potentialities of accomplishment in the world here below. It was the great work of the period of transition, and especially of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to effect this change, "to awaken in man a consciousness of his powers, to give him confidence in himself, to show him the beauty of the world and the joy of life, and to make him feel his living connection with the past and the greatness of the future he might create." [3] As soon as men began clearly to experience such feelings, they began to inquire, and inquiry led to the realization that there had been a great historic past of which they knew but little, and of which they wanted to know much. When this point had been reached, western Europe was ready for a revival of learning. THE BEGINNINGS IN ITALY. This revival began in Italy. The Italians had preserved more of the old Roman culture than had any other people, and had been the first to develop a new political and social order and revive the refinements of life after the deluge of barbarism which had engulfed Europe. They, too, had been the first to feel the inadequacy of mediaeval learning to satisfy the intellectual unrest of men conscious of new standards of life. This gave them at least a century of advance over the nations of northern Europe. The old Roman life also was nearer to them, and meant more, so that a movement for a revival of interest in it attracted to it the finest young minds of central and northern Italy and inspired in them something closely akin to patriotic fervor. They felt themselves the direct heirs of the political and intellectual eminence of Imperial Rome, and they began the work of restoring to themselves and of trying to understand their inheritance. [Illustration: FIG. 68. PETRARCH (1304-74) "The Morning Star of the Renaissance"]