the old tribal authority as inherited by the city-state; and not one of the
great dramatists had conceived of the significance of a genuine
individualism.[1]

[Sidenote: Renaissance.]

The Renaissance advanced to a new conception of the worth and the capacity
of the individual mind, and for the first time in history recognized the
full social meaning of personality in man. It sanctioned and authenticated
the right of the individual to think for himself, and it developed clearly
the idea that he may become the transmitter of valid revelations of
spiritual truth. That God may speak through individual intuition and
reason, and that this inward revelation may be of the highest authority and
worth, was a conception first brought to distinct acceptance by the
Renaissance.

A marked tendency of the Reformation which it received from the Renaissance
was its acceptance of the free spirit of individualism. The Roman Church
had taught that all valid religious truth comes to mankind through its own
corporate existence, but the Reformers insisted that truth is the result of
individual insight and investigation. The Reformation magnified the worth
of personality, and made it the central force in all human effort.[2] To
gain a positive personal life, one of free initiative power, that may in
itself become creative, and capable of bringing truth and life to larger
issues, was the chief motive of the Protestant leaders in their work of
reformation. The result was that, wherever genuine Protestantism appeared,
it manifested itself by its attitude of free inquiry, its tendency to
emphasize individual life and thought, and its break with the traditions of
the past, whether in literature or in religion. The Reformation did not,
however, bring the principle of individuality to full maturity; and it