Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 | Page 8

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 formulæ 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 _cortège_ 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 mythology. Science was
born, and the warfare between scientific positivism and religious
metaphysic was declared. Henceforth God could not be worshiped
under the forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning had
been given to the words: 'God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him
must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' The reason of man was at last
able to study the scheme of the universe, of which he is a part, and to
ascertain the actual laws by which it is governed. Three centuries and a
half have elapsed since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is only
by reflecting on the mass of knowledge we have since acquired,
knowledge not only infinitely curious but also incalculably useful in its
application to the arts of life, and then considering how much ground of
this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded the
Renaissance, that we are at all able to estimate the expansive force
which was then generated. Science, rescued from the hand of astrology,
geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the Renaissance. Since
then, as far as to the present moment she has never ceased to grow.
Progressive and durable, Science may be called the first-born of the
spirit of the modern world.
[1] It is to Michelet that we owe these formulæ, which have passed into

the language of history.
Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on the one hand the
appropriation by civilized humanity of all corners of the habitable
globe, and on the other the conquest by Science of all that we now
know about the nature of the universe. In the discovery of man, again,
it is possible to trace a twofold process. Man in his temporal relations,
illustrated by Pagan antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations,
illustrated by Biblical antiquity; these are the two regions, at first
apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpenetrative, which the
critical and inquisitive genius of the Renaissance opened for
investigation. In the former of these regions we find two agencies at
work, art and scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, like
philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless
scholasticism--a frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically
and without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became
symbolically connected