The creators of modernity—Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Bacon—saw themselves as pioneers of the new who boldly turned their backs on the past. Toward that past they felt, on the one hand, contempt of the kind one feels toward something both foolish and harmful, and on the other hand, sympathy mixed with the condescension one may feel toward something that had once, perhaps, some nobility and charm, but which disappeared, never to return. Even if some of the modernizers took advantage of the old—and many did—they, like Descartes, did so without admitting it, and did all they could to obliterate any
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