ations was generated. Men found that in classical as well as
biblical antiquity existed an ideal of human life, both moral and
intellectual, by which they might profit in the present. The modern
genius felt confidence in its own energies when it learned what the
ancients had achieved. The guesses of the ancients stimulated the
exertions of the moderns. The whole world's history seemed once more to
be one.

The great achievements of the Renaissance were the discovery of the
world and the discovery of man. Under these two formulas may be
classified all the phenomena which properly belong to this period. The
discovery of the world divides itself into two branches--the exploration
of the globe, and that systematic exploration of the universe which is
in fact what we call science. Columbus made known America in 1492; the
Portuguese rounded the Cape in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar
system in 1507. It is not necessary to add anything to this plain
statement, for, in contact with facts of such momentous import, to avoid
what seems like commonplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is
only when we contrast the ten centuries which preceded these dates with
the four centuries which have ensued that we can estimate the magnitude
of that Renaissance movement by means of which a new hemisphere has been
added to civilization.

In like manner, it is worth while to pause a moment and consider what is
implied in the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system.
The world, regarded in old times as the centre of all things, the apple
of God's eye, for the sake of which were created sun and moon and stars,
suddenly was found to be one of the many balls that roll round a giant
sphere of light and heat, which is itself but one among innumerable
suns, attended each by a _cortege_ of planets, and scattered--how, we
know not--through infinity. What has become of that brazen seat of the
old gods, that paradise to which an ascending Deity might be caught up
through clouds, and hidden for a moment from the eyes of his disciples?
The demonstration of the simplest truths of astronomy destroyed at a
blow the legends that were most significant to the early Christians by
annihilating their symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Galileo
for his proof of the world's mobility. Instinctively she perceived that
in this one proposition was involved the principle of hostility to her
most cherished conceptions, to the very core of her