Europe four hundred years ago. xvii 



progress ; and during the entire period of four hundred 

 years that has passed since the beginning, towards the 

 close of the fifteenth century, of what is properly 

 modern history, that invisible progress of the intel- 

 lect which underlies visible progress, has proceeded, 

 so far as the rapidity of such a process admits of 

 being estimated, as rapidly as it is proceeding 

 now. 



To make this evident, let us consider what was 

 the state of the European world immediately before 

 the discovery of America in the year 1492 an event 

 which may be fairly regarded as the commencement 

 of modern history. At that time, the greater part 

 of the globe had never been visited by Europeans ; 

 and the existence of North and South America, of 

 Oceania, and of the ocean route to India, was un- 

 known. Astronomy was as the ancients had left it, 

 and the earth was regarded as the centre of the 

 universe. The fundamental conceptions of our 

 modern physical science had not been formed ; the 

 foundation of physiology had not been laid, and it 

 appears probable that medical and surgical practice 

 had retrograded since the time of the Roman Empire. 

 The Renaissance was only dawning, and the intel- 

 lectual glories of Elizabethan England were in the 

 future ; the Papal and the Feudal systems remained 

 unbroken ; the religious revolt of the Reformation, 

 and the political revolt of the French Revolution, 

 were not imagined. The Divine right of kings 

 remained unquestioned; and the enforcement of 



