The contemporaries of Machiavelli and Lorenzo de’ Medici were not particularly interested in ethics. They were practical men who made the best of a practical world. Outwardly they remained at peace with the Church because it was a powerful and far-reaching organization which was capable of doing them great harm and they never consciously took part in any of the several attempts at reform or questioned the institutions under which they lived.
But their insatiable curiosity concerning old facts, their continual search after new emotions, the very instability of their restless minds, caused a world which had been brought up in the conviction “We know” to ask the question “Do we really know?”
And that is a greater claim to the gratitude of all future generations than the collected sonnets of Petrarch or the assembled works of Raffael.
CHAPTER XII
THE REFORMATION
Modern psychology has taught us several useful things about ourselves. One of them is the fact that we rarely do anything actuated by one single motive. Whether we give a million dollars for a new university or refuse a nickel to a hungry tramp; whether we proclaim that the true life of intellectual freedom can only be lived abroad or vow that we will never again leave the shores of America; whether we insist upon calling black white or white black, there are always a number of divergent reasons which have caused us to make our decision, and way down deep in our hearts we know this to be true. But as we would cut a sorry figure with the world in general if we should ever dare to be quite honest with ourselves or our neighbors, we instinctively choose the most respectable and deserving among our many motives, brush it up a bit for public consumption and then expose it for all the world to behold as “the reason why we did so and so.”
But whereas it has been repeatedly demonstrated that it is quite possible to fool most of the people most of the time, no one has as yet discovered a method by which the average individual can fool himself for more than a few minutes.
We are all of us familiar with this most embarrassing truth and therefore ever since the beginning of civilization people have tacitly agreed with each other that this should never under any circumstances be referred to in public.
What we think in private, that is our own business. As long as we maintain an outward air of respectability, we are perfectly satisfied with ourselves and merrily act upon the principle “You believe my fibs and I will believe yours.”