accumulated
forces of the new. A belief in the identity of the human spirit under
all previous manifestations and in its uninterrupted continuity 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.[1] Under these two formulae 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 center 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 s