Note 12 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT
Reading edition
When Pattison declares that Italian curiosity had bred “not secret unbelief but callous acquiescence” he sets up a spurious antithesis; and when he generalizes that in Italy “men did not disbelieve the truths of the Christian religion,” he understates the case. He errs equally in the opposite direction when he alleges (ib. p. 141) that in the France of Montaigne “a philosophical skepticism had become the creed of all thinking men.” Such a difference between France and Italy was impossible. ↑