THE ATLANTIC AND WESTERN MAN 299 



their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for 

 untried experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a 

 prospect of incalculable change/' 



From the standpoint of modern science and of our social 

 and political adjustment and growth in the invigorating 

 atmosphere of a new world, the second important factor grow- 

 ing out of this vast new opportunity for man is the almost 

 terrifying speed-up of his extension of material power. West- 

 ern man no sooner got used to the gifts of new fisheries, huge 

 forests, and a virgin soil already cropped with the Indian 

 maize that saved the lives of the first-comers, before fresh 

 invention and growth in commerce and the art of sail brought 

 the riches of the world to create the wealth and power of 

 the Atlantic seaboard colonies. Meanwhile the stored treasure 

 of the Aztec and Inca empires had poured back into Europe, 

 also establishing there great mercantile enterprises that were 

 in a few generations to feed greater expansion based on the 

 invention of the steam engine and on the industrial revo- 

 lution. Speed of expansion and invention accelerated, and 

 released the revolutionary optimism and ideas of progress that 

 rejected colonialism in the west and shortly thereafter put an 

 end to human slavery. 



As in all periods of fresh and renewed vigor in human devel- 

 opment, the impulse was felt in all the affairs of men. Method, 

 idea, spiritual insight, and political invention all leaped ahead 

 into new and untried fields. The ocean, once a barrier, became 

 a way for safe world communication, and the wave of west- 

 ward immigration of European peoples spanned the Ocean 

 River from east to west. This has been the greatest movement 

 of peoples and cultures since central Asia poured its refresh- 

 ing hordes into the Mediterranean world, and the science of 

 the Arabs penetrated to the early universities of Europe. 



At first, of course, the romantic, the greedy, and the per- 

 sonally ambitious poured in on the heels of the trail-breakers; 



