NUMEROUS CAUSES OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 69 



The sea, by the fresh rise of navigation, became the main 

 highway of transit, even before the Compass made its 

 appearance, and intercourse between East and West revived. 

 Old barriers, social as well as geographical, were by degrees 

 weakened in every direction. Associations and co-operation 

 gave collective strength to trade. Commercial wealth, now 

 created, widened " Economy/' until then agricultural only, 

 and vied with land-wealth in devising novel sources of 

 material welfare. Capital, a new factor, centred in many 

 points, faced vast enterprises. The bill of exchange sup- 

 pressed the distance of money markets. Mining supplied 

 raw material hitherto limited. The abolition of slavery and 

 serfdom meanwhile gradually induced mechanical con- 

 trivances to replace and multiply hand labour. The practical 

 skill and the operations involved in industry and art had 

 natural consequences of a high order : they stimulated com- 

 petition unknown till then ; they raised, by several degrees, 

 the intellectual power of the artisan and burgess multitude ; 

 they conduced to improved processes of production, that is, 

 to a vast number of inventions,* many of which were as 

 favourable to the scientific movement, such as it was, as 

 to industry. Warfare itself became scientific from the use 

 of fire-arms. Simultaneously, the practice of art, together 

 with the growth of the aesthetic faculty, and of the activity 

 consequent upon it, was likewise beneficial to practical 

 science, which in its turn no less beneficially reacted upon 

 art and industry. Marvellous cathedrals in every country 

 afford splendid and irrefutable evidence of that fact. In 

 France alone 1128 great churches were built in the Xlth 

 and Xllth centuries, besides 989 new monasteries (most 

 of which opened schools) during the Xllth and Xlllth 

 centuries. The creative power which could give birth to 

 such architectural wonders is also to be found in sculpture, 

 in painting, in music; it is evidenced with equal variety in 



* As early as the Xth century the mathematical science and me- 

 chanical inventions of Gerbert (better known as Pope Sylvester II.), 

 d. 1003, were sufficient to give him a great reputation (Hallam). He 

 had studied at Cordova. The Indian numerals, algebra, the pendulum 

 clock were introduced into Europe by him. 



