Machiavelli was obviously too much a man of his age to be able to surpass the theory of man as an individual attempting to realise his personality in a world in which he could expand as freely as possible. He could not conceive the objectivity and consequent importance of the State as moral reality, and still less the intimate subjectivity of the objective world in which man realises his will. The very word “Fortune” kept to indicate actuality was misleading, and veiled his real notion of freedom; he severed liberty from law and by only retaining the former he gave the careless or ignorant an opportunity for the vulgar interpretation of his doctrines. Time and the works of Bruno and Campanella, stripped of their heretical outlook, were to further in the mind of Vico the first maturity of the fruits of which the seed was to be found in the Florentine statesman’s ideas of “virtue” and political morality. Thus, while the other modern nations were necessarily getting more deeply embogged in their anti-historical attitude towards life, Italy, in the political idleness of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was slowly elaborating those doctrines that may yet prove to be the ballast needed by all countries to weather the present political and social storms. CHAPTER III THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND AND ITALY The contribution of England to the history of the world during the seventeenth century is so considerable that the very attempt to sketch it is almost an impertinence. It cannot be reduced into schematic lines, for there never was a richer synthesis of life. Never have religion, art, and philosophy pervaded the whole life of a people as they did in England at the end of the sixteenth and during all the seventeenth century. Very highly refined periods do not produce great arts and it must be said that with very few exceptions the creative generations are bound to be rather trivial. Strong minds, deep religious feelings, the virile consciousness of personal efficiency, do not make for tolerance and refinement in practical life; but they yield a philosophical, an artistic, a political harvest on which their progeny continue to live for centuries, elaborating and refining until tolerance is the order of the day in philosophical, religious and political matters, whilst dilettantism and criticism flourish, preparing the way for new generations of creative men.