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This developing modern mind was clearly one in which secular values predominated over those espoused by the Church so the irony was that some of the Popes displayed and supported it while others just displayed it in their pursuit of worldly power. Basically, it was found in Popes and people who took responsibility for their own fate by acting upon the notion that it was the individual rather than God who was the architect of the human condition. The human being became the center of life, and although the external gap between the way things were and the way they should have been remained, the standard for judging the way they should have been was changed to accommodate human limitations and emphasize human aspirations.
For the ways the people of the Renaissance presumed to modify their traditional, Christian lifestyle, they (like the Greeks) are better known for what they attempted than what they achieved. Even if much of what they attempted was done mistakenly or imperfectly, it all contributed to the shaping of the strange, confused, uncritical Renaissance mentality. While they had not abandoned heavenly ideals, they tried to satisfy their curiosity by doing things. No longer an age of believers and not yet an age of thinkers, the Renaissance was an age of "Doers". As this was an age when the human mind was turned loose to interact with the world, the Renaissance doer was first and foremost a "Discoverer". He discovered an artistic appreciation of life, the past, new places and, most important of all, himself. Proud of his accomplishments rather than afraid of God, the Renaissance man was eager to discover who he was so that he could be himself. Neither reborn Greek nor good Christian, he was more flamboyant than classical and more theatrical than theological. What he failed to discover about being human was that his limitations were a function of his subjective nature. Nevertheless, as the star of a drama with neither plot nor development, Renaissance man strutted about his world stage in this unstructured age which had its own characteristic spirit, attitude and tone. It should not be surprising that the most notable achievements of the age were in the field of art because the Renaissance was essentially artistic in spirit. The use of knowledge about the world to create order, beauty and truth was the inherently artistic, subjective process that characterized the age, and as gratifying and self-serving as it was emotionally for each individual, it was confusing intellectually for society in the long-run and
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