A NEW FACTOR 177 



inventions four armored knights had been more 

 than a match for as many hundreds of the common 

 people. After that they were not. Before then, 

 thinkers, scientists, moral enthusiasts, reformers, 

 etc., had hardly the least chance of influencing the 

 masses of humanity, as against the overwhelming, 

 insidious, highly organized power and authority of 

 ecclesiasticism and feudalism. The art of printing 

 gave them that chance. Before this, the oceans, to 

 the mariners, had been trackless, terrible labyrinths ; 

 thereafter they were wide open roadways, leading 

 directly from and to every point on the continents 

 adjoining them. And how wonderful are the results 

 of these three triumphs of human genius ! 



Within less than two centuries they produced 

 an enormous expansion in humanity's knowledge 

 and ideas of the surface of our earth, also in com- 

 merce, industry, art, literature, etc. Then came the 

 discovery of America and the reformation of Luther, 

 the revival of learning, and simultaneously in a 

 few decades an amount of improvement in the physi- 

 cal, mental, and moral conditions of mankind far 

 greater than that accomplished in the more than 

 1,000 years preceding. Then within the last 130 

 years the American and French revolutions have 

 occurred, also the independence of the Spanish 

 American colonies; the introduction of constitu- 

 tional instead of autocratic government in most of 

 the European nationalities; and in nearly all civi- 

 lized countries a larger degree of freedom of religion, 



