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 formulae, 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.