h was so little
heeded that the noble and daring spirits who sought it, especially in
its scientific form, did so in deadly peril of the fagot and the
halter.

During this period there were several very important extra-European
movements, one or two of which deeply affected Europe. Islam arose,
and conquered far and wide, uniting fundamentally different races into
a brotherhood of feeling which Christianity has never been able to
rival, and at the time of the Crusades profoundly influencing European
culture. It produced a civilization of its own, brilliant and here and
there useful, but hopelessly limited when compared with the
civilization of which we ourselves are the heirs. The great cultured
peoples of southeastern and eastern Asia continued their checkered
development totally unaffected by, and without knowledge of, any
European influence.

Throughout the whole period there came against Europe, out of the
unknown wastes of central Asia, an endless succession of strange and
terrible conqueror races whose mission was mere destruction--Hun and
Avar, Mongol, Tartar, and Turk. These fierce and squalid tribes of
warrior horsemen flailed mankind with red scourges, wasted and
destroyed, and then vanished from the ground they had overrun. But in
no way worth noting did they count in the advance of mankind.

At last, a little over four hundred years ago, the movement towards a
world civilization took up its interrupted march. The beginning of the
modern movement may roughly be taken as synchronizing with the
discovery of printing, and with that series of bold sea ventures which
culminated in the discovery of America; and after these two epochal
feats had begun to produce their full effects in material and
intellectual life, it became inevitable that civilization should
thereafter differ not only in degree but even in kind from all that
had gone before. Immediately after the voyages of Columbus and Vasco
da Gama there began a tremendous religious ferment; the awakening of
intellect went hand in hand with the moral uprising; the great names
of Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo show that the mind of man
was breaking the fetters that had cramped it; and for the first time
experimentation was used as a check upon observation and theorization.
Since then, century by century, the changes have increased in rapidity
and complexity, and have attained their maximum in both respects
during the century just past. Instead of bein