There are without doubt many men of hardihood and full of experience who, before Christopher Columbus and after him, explored with persevering efforts unknown lands across seas still more unknown. Their memory is celebrated, and will be so by the renown and the recollection of their good deeds, seeing that they have extended the frontiers of science and of civilization, and that not at the price of slight efforts, but with an exalted ardor of spirit, and often through extreme perils. It is not the less true that there is a great difference between them and him of whom we speak. The eminently distinctive point in Columbus is, that in crossing the immense expanses of the ocean he followed an object more grand and more elevated than the others. This does not say, doubtless, that he was not in any way influenced by the very praiseworthy desire to be master of science, to well deserve the approval of society, or that he despised the glory whose stimulant is ordinarily more sensitive to elevated minds, or that he was not at all looking to his own personal interests. But above all these human reasons, that of religion was uppermost by a great deal in him, and it was this, without any doubt, which sustained his spirit and his will, and which frequently, in the midst of extreme difficulties, filled him with consolation. He learned in reality that his plan, his resolution profoundly carved in his heart, was to open access to the gospel in new lands and in new seas. This may seem hardly probable to those who, concentrating all their care, all their thoughts, in the present nature of things, as it is perceived by the senses, refuse to look upon greater benefits. But, on the other hand, it is the characteristic of eminent minds to prefer to elevate themselves higher, for they are better disposed than all others to seize the impulses and the inspirations of the divine faith. Certainly, Columbus had united the study of nature to the study of religion, and he had conformed his mind to the precepts intimately drawn from the Catholic faith. It is thus that, having learned by astronomy and ancient documents that beyond the limits of the known world there were, in addition, toward the west, large tracts of territory unexplored up to that time by anybody, he considered in his mind the immense multitude of those who were plunged in lamentable darkness, subject to insensate rites and to the superstitions of senseless divinities. He considered that they miserably led a savage life, with ferocious customs; that, more miserably still, they were wanting in all notion of the most important things, and that they were plunged in ignorance of the only true God.