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The History of Education; educational practice and progress considered as a phase of the development and spread of western civilization by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley
page 249 of 1184 (21%)
a cause of further change. The old isolation was at last about to end, and
intercommunication and some common ideas and common feelings were being
brought about. Both those who went and those who remained at home were
deeply stirred by the movement. Christendom as a great international
community, in which all alike were interested in a common ideal and in a
common fight against the infidel, was a new idea now dawning upon the mass
of the people, whereas before it had been but little understood.

The travel to distant lands, the sight of cities of wealth and power, and
the contact with peoples decidedly superior to themselves in civilization,
not only excited the imagination and led to a broadening of the minds of
those who returned, but served as well to raise the general level of
intelligence in western Europe. Some new knowledge also was brought back,
but that was not at the time of great importance. The principal gain came
in the elimination forever of thousands of quarreling, fighting noblemen,
[27] thus giving the kingly power a chance to consolidate holdings and
begin the evolution of modern States; in the marked change of attitude
toward the old problems; in the awakening of a new interest in the present
world; in the creation of new interests and new desires among the common
people; in the awakening of a spirit of religious unity and of national
consciousness; and especially in the awakening of a new intellectual life,
which soon found expression in the organization of universities for study
and in more extensive travel and geographical exploration than the world
had known since the days of ancient Rome. The greatest of all the results,
however, came through the revival of trade, commerce, manufacturing, and
industry in the rising cities of western Europe, with the consequent
evolution of a new and important class of merchants, bankers, and
craftsmen, who formed a new city class and in time developed a new system
of training for themselves and their children.

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