1. The physical universe had undergone a wonderful transformation for man. Our nineteenth century has often been looked upon as a period of extraordinary discoveries; but no discoveries have ever so revolutionized the human mind as those enumerated above as “the external causes of the fall of the society of the Middle Ages.” Think how new that old world must have seemed to the common people who had supposed it to be flat, as well as to the scientists who had hypothetically supposed it to be solid――how new it must have seemed when they found that it had been actually circumnavigated! How the horizon of men’s minds must have widened when new continents were discovered by sailors and new celestial worlds were found by the telescope of the astronomers! Discovery led to experiment, and the whole new physical world was transformed by the new physical science of Galileo into a mechanical order. It was a wonderful new material world that was discovered and scientifically reorganized at the beginning of the Renaissance. Whereas the common man in mediæval time had found little joy in living, the common man now looked upon the world as a magnificent opportunity. Whereas the mediæval man had turned from the disorders of this wicked world to contemplation of the blessedness of heaven, the man of the Renaissance came forth from the cloister and engaged in trade and adventure. The earth and the things therein had suddenly become objects of emotional interest. 2. Not only was a new geographical and physical world discovered at this time, but also the intellectual world of antiquity was restored. For more than a thousand years in western Europe the literature of the Greeks and Romans had been a thing of shreds and patches, and even then read only in Latin translations. Now the European had come into possession of a large part of it and was reading it in the original. He was aroused to the wonderful intellectual life of the Age of Pericles. The interest in ancient literature, which had been started by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, became an absorbing and controlling force at this time. The real interest began with the stimulus received by the coming of the Greek scholars to Italy from the East: first the ecclesiastical embassy in 1438, and afterward in 1453 the large number of refugees from Constantinople at the time of its capture by the Turks. Upon these refugees the patronage of the great Italian nobles――chiefly perhaps in Florence――was lavishly bestowed. The Platonic Academy was founded. Learned expounders of the new learning arose,――Pletho, the two Picos, Fincinus, Reuchlin. Of all the philosophies of antiquity Platonism was favored, and it was interpreted in a mystical manner. Aristotle and Christianity were looked upon as mere interpretations of Plato. Nevertheless the Renaissance scholars were interested in all the new literary material from the East. They studied the Jewish Cabala and its mystic numbers.