period, as other men do to theirs. Machiavelli [1] says that the way to
renovate states is always to go back to first principles, especially to
the first principles upon which those states were founded. The same law,
if law it be, may hold good as regards the renovation of any science, art,
or mode of human action. The man who is too closely united in thought and
feeling with his own age, is seldom the man inclined to go back to these
first principles.

[Footnote 1: Machiavelli was contemporary with Columbus. No two men
could have been more dissimilar; and Machiavelli was thoroughly a
product of his age, and a man who entirely belonged to it.]

It is very noticeable in Columbus that he was it most dutiful, unswerving,
and un-inquiring son of the Church. The same man who would have taken
nothing for granted in scientific research, and would not have held
himself bound by the authority of the greatest names in science, never
ventured for a moment to trust himself as a discoverer on the perilous sea
of theological investigation.

In this respect Las Casas, though a churchman, was very different from
Columbus. Such doctrines as that the Indians should be somewhat civilized
before being converted, and that even baptism might be postponed to
instruction,--doctrines that would have found a ready acceptance from the
good bishop--would have met with small response from the soldierly
theology of Columbus.

The whole life of Columbus shows how rarely men of the greatest insight
and foresight, and also of the greatest perseverance, attain the exact
ends they aim at. In this respect all such men partake the career of the
alchemists, who did not transmute other metals into gold, but made