an invincible power that set for ever the mark of progress upon the
time that was to come. There is the same unbound originality and
disregard for inherited sanctions in the rare philosophers as in the
discovery of Divine Right, and the intruding Imperialism of Rome. The
like effects are visible everywhere, and one generation beheld them
all. It was an awakening of new life; the world revolved in a
different orbit, determined by influences unknown before. After many
ages persuaded of the headlong decline and impending dissolution of
society #11, and governed by usage and the will of masters who were in
their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried
experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of
incalculable change.

That forward movement divides it broadly from the older world;
and the unity of the new is manifest in the universal spirit of
investigation and discovery which did not cease to operate, and
withstood the recurring efforts of reaction, until, by the advent
of the reign of general ideas which we call the Revolution, it at
length prevailed #12. This successive deliverance and gradual
passage, for good and evil, from subordination to independence is
a phenomenon of primary import to us, because historical science
has been one of its instruments #13. If the Past has been an obstacle
and a burden, knowledge of the Past is the safest and the surest
emancipation. And the earnest search for it is one of the signs
that distinguish the four centuries of which I speak from those
that went before. The Middle Ages, which possessed good writers
of contemporary narrative, were careless and impatient of older
fact. They became content to be deceived, to live in a twilight
of fiction, under clouds of false witness, inventing according to
convenience, and glad to welcome the forger and the cheat #14. As