160 THE WORLD MACHINE 



His works, filtering through the pens of Cardinal d'Ailly and 

 others, caught at last the ear of a strange and masterful man, 

 a wanderer and a thinker, half a pirate and half a seer ; and 

 out of the tumult of his ideas came at last the project of a 

 voyage to India through the waters of the unknown west. The 

 mystic needle which would pilot the mariner without the aid 

 of headland or star had come into general use. Adventurous 

 voyages were being undertaken. An era of maritime discovery 

 had been begun. The circumnavigation of Africa was to be 

 attempted anew. From one of his most distinguished country- 

 men, the Florentine astronomer Toscanelli, Columbus had found 

 reassurance for his great design. The ancient speculations of 

 Eratosthenes and Strabo as to the feasibility of such a voyage 

 and the existence of other and doubtless habitable continents, 

 were being ardently discussed. For a century or more these 

 ideas had been revivified and popularised through the curious 

 and widely read writings of Sir Jehan Maundeville, " Knight of 

 St. Albans." 



The mistaken measures of the circle of the earth handed 

 down from Ptolemy, the equally mistaken ideas as to the distance 

 of India to the East, gave to the project a far less hazardous 

 air than the reality would have presented. Still, it was difficult 

 enough ; in the minds of most, a fantastic dream. 



The discovery of the New World came to Europe like a 

 bolt from the blue. Yet the quest of Columbus was in some 

 sense as definite an inquiry as a laboratory experiment. Measure- 

 ments had been undertaken ; a fund of fact and theory had 

 been evolved ; vast inductions had been framed. The prows of 

 the Santa Maria and its companion vessels were turned towards 

 the west to test the validity of these conceptions. It was 

 experimental science put to the proof. With the news of the 

 discovery the enlightened spirits among mankind saw, as it were, 

 in the skies a sign 



" In hoc signo vinces." 



The scientific method, the rational use of experience, of in- 

 ference from careful observation, of hypothesis and verification, 

 had won its first brilliant victory in the new time. The march 

 of the mind towards the intellectual conquest of the world 

 destined, we may believe, never again to be interrupted or 

 thrown back so long as the human race survives had begun 

 again. 



