In the broadest sense the underlying principle of the struggle is the reassertion of interest in the world.
This is the reassertion of a principle which the middle ages had lost sight of - that knowledge, if it is to have any value, must be intelligence, and not erudition.
This policy - which was presumably that of Nicias in opposition to Alcibiades - having failed, the way was cleared for a reassertion of that policy of western conquest which had always had advocates from Themistocles onward in Athens,' and was part of the democratic programme.
The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste; in the gentleness and charity to all men, which takes the place of a poor-law in India, and gives a high significance to the half satirical epithet of the " mild " Hindu.
In this article the Renaissance will be considered as implying a comprehensive movement of the European intellect and will Method toward self-emancipation, toward reassertion of the natural rights of the reason and the senses, toward the conquest of this planet as a place of human occupation, and toward the formation of regulative theories both for states and individuals differing from those of medieval times.