and we are all familiar with the fact that the same important idea (never before revealed in all the ages) occurs to separate and widely distinct minds at about the same time.  The invention of the electric telegraph seemed to burst upon the world simultaneously from many quarters—­not perfect, perhaps, but the time for the idea had come—­and happy was it for the man who entertained it.  We have agreed to call Columbus the discoverer of America, but I suppose there is no doubt that America had been visited by European, and probably Asiatic, people ages before Columbus; that four or five centuries before him people from northern Europe had settlements here; he was fortunate, however, in “discovering” it in the fullness of time, when the world, in its progress, was ready for it.  If the Greeks had had gunpowder, electro-magnetism, the printing press, history would need to be rewritten.  Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find out these things is a mystery upon any other theory than the one we are considering.

And it is as mysterious that China, having gunpowder and the art of printing, is not today like Germany.

There seems to me to be a progress, or an intention of progress, in the world, independent of individual men.  Things get on by all sorts of instruments, and sometimes by very poor ones.  There are times when new thoughts or applications of known principles seem to throng from the invisible for expression through human media, and there is hardly ever an important invention set free in the world that men do not appear to be ready cordially to receive it.  Often we should be justified in saying that there was a widespread expectation of it.  Almost all the great inventions and the ingenious application of principles have many claimants for the honor of priority.

On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world an intention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, I cannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and pass away, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate.  We, the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages.  I do not believe that anything of importance has been lost to the world.  The Jewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever was valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now.  We may say the same of the civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude’s figure, collapsed into a heap of incoherent sand, the ideas remained, and Greek art and Roman law are part of the world’s solid possessions.

Even those who question the value to the individual of what we call progress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world from age to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion.  The intelligent schoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew—­more about the visible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the human body.  The rudiments of his education, the common experiences of his everyday life, were, at the best, the guesses and speculations of a remote age.  There is certainly an accumulation of facts, ideas, knowledge.  Whether this makes men better, wiser, happier, is indeed disputed.