It is now no longer a number of different nations living alongside each other and only influencing each other through commercial competition or power struggles, but it is: a new spirit – stemming from philosophy and the sciences based on it – a spirit of free criticism, providing norms for infinite tasks, and it dominates mankind creating new, infinite ideals”.
The second is the vision of Paul Valéry. He stresses the spiritual character of Europe in his essay “l’Européen”. In 1924 he wrote: “Wherever the names Caesar, Gaius, Trajan and Virgil, wherever the names Moises and St. Paul, wherever the names Aristotle, Plato and Euclid have a significance and carry weight, that is where Europe is”.