The invention of printing towards the
close of the fifteenth century gradually revolutionized the pursuit of
knowledge and created a real democracy of letters. What learning might
have lost in depth through its marvelous broadening has perhaps been
compensated for by the application of the keenest minds in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to experimental science and in our
own day to applied science.
(6) _Spirit of progress and decline of conservatism_. For better
or for worse the modern man is intellectually more self-reliant than
his ancestors, more prone to try new inventions and to profit by new
discoveries, more conscious and therefore more critical of conditions
about him, more convinced that he lives in a better world than did his
fathers, and that his children who come after him should have a better
chance than he has had. This is the modern spirit. It is the product of
all the other elements of the history of five hundred years--the larger
geographical horizon, the greater physical comfort, the revolutionized
political institutions, the broader sympathies, the newer ideals of
education.
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