Gold and pleasure were the deities to whom we owe the charming eighteenth century. But they lead to revolutions. This fact came out clearly, too clearly in fact, in Italy, and compelled men to endeavour to restrain these two great world forces within wholesome limits. In the fifteenth century Christian socialism reared its head high at Florence and Rome, and under stress of its menaces a science of philosophy came to birth. In presence of this social peril, certain men, compelled to issue from their egotism, pointed out the road for timid women to follow to avoid vengeful reprisals. Men of affairs, bankers, notaries and others banded themselves together with the firm resolution of forgoing business, interests, ambitions, even their for the most part despotic hopes in state intervention, of seeking to practise self-devotion, and of borrowing, if necessary, something of the idealism of philosophers and artists, so that they might give a practical sanction to their high station by working to raise others. The Florentine people swallowed the bait; at once ardent and refined, they admirably blended practical reasoning with ideal aspirations. And so the first step was taken. However, it was more particularly at Rome that this idea, still rudimentary and ill-defined, of purifying life and pursuing social happiness by means of the tender charm of the Beautiful made progress. It found there a well-prepared soil. Intellectual culture and elegance of speech did not represent at Rome, as they did elsewhere, a mere ornamentation, they were the very substance of the state. Money was intellectualised as regards its origin and its end, and nowhere had men a better conception of an oligarchical society, a republic regulated by absolute power. The heads of the church formed a unique world of their own, as little tainted by the military or frivolous character with which certain aristocracies were reproached as by the taste for coarse pleasures natural to some self-made men. They showed indeed a living example of a true aristocracy, in the exact signification of the word, that is to say, a body of men of varied degrees of rank, raised high above the common run of men by some eminent gift—some by high political position or distinguished birth, others by a large fortune, others by great accomplishments, renowned virtue, profound learning, striking talents. They abhorred cliques and their pettinesses; to greatness of position should correspond greatness of ideas. And this splendid aristocracy, thus composed of the choice flower of society, delighted in tracing its descent from remote ancestors. It set no store either on high ancestry (though some were of brilliant descent), or on a display of wealth (though some had enormous fortunes); it ventured to connect itself with all the most illustrious and conspicuous names in the past history of the human race from the time of the Greeks and Romans: Plato, Socrates, Archimedes, and Cicero were its ancestors.