CHAPTER I. 
SWAMMERDAM, 
■r= - 
What was known of the Infinite prior to 
1600 ? Nothing whatever. Nothing of the 
infinitely great; nothing of the infinitely 
little. The celebrated page of Pascal, very 
frequently cited upon this subject, is the frank 
astonishment of a humanity so old and yet 
so young, which begins to be aware of its 
prodigious ignorance, opens its eyes to the 
Real, and awakens between two abysses. 
No one forgets that in 1610 Galileo, having 
received from Holland a magnifying lens, con¬ 
structed the telescope, elevated it in position, 
and saw the firmament. But it is less generally known that Swam¬ 
merdam, seizing, with the instinct of genius, on the imperfect micro¬ 
scope, directed it to the lower world, and was the first to detect the 
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