t.]

We have next to inquire, if Columbus had heard of Vinland and
comprehended its relation to his own theory about land at the west, why
in the world should he have concealed this valuable knowledge? The
notion seems to be that he must have kept it secret through an unworthy
desire to claim a priority in discovery to which he knew that he was not
entitled.[477] This is projecting our present knowledge into the past
with a vengeance. Columbus never professed to have discovered America;
he died in the belief that what he had done was to reach the eastern
shores of Asia by a shorter route than the Portuguese. If he had reason
to suppose that the Northmen had once come down from the Arctic seas to
some unknown part of the Asiatic coast, he had no motive for concealing
such a fact, but the strongest of motives for proclaiming it, inasmuch
as it would have given him the kind of inductive argument which he
sorely needed. The chief obstacle for Columbus was that for want of
tangible evidence he was obliged to appeal to men's reason with
scientific arguments. When you show things to young children they are
not content with looking; they crave a more intimate acquaintance than
the eyes alone can give, and so they reach out and handle the things.
So when ideas are presented to grown-up men, they are apt to be
unwilling to trust to the eye of reason until it has been supplemented
by the eye of sense; and indeed in most affairs of life such caution is
wholesome. The difference between Columbus and many of the "practical"
men whom he sought to convince was that he could see with his mind's eye
solid land beyond the Sea of Darkness while they could not. To them the
ocean, like the sky, had nothing beyond, unless it might be the
supernatural world.[478] For while the argument from the earth's
rotundity was intelligible enough, there were few to whom, as to
Toscanelli, it was a living truth. Even of those who admitted, in
theory, that Cathay lay to the west of Europe, most deemed the distance
untraversable. Inductive proof of the existence of accessible land to
the west was thus what Columbus chiefly needed, and what he sought every
opportunity to find and produce; but it was not easy to find anything
more substantial than sailors' vague mention of driftwood of foreign
aspect or other outlandish jetsam washed up on the Portuguese
strand.[479] What a godsend it would have been for Columbus if he could
have had the Vinland business to h