dition or by probability--seemed to
offer a clear contrast and a clear foreshadowing also of Prince Henry's
method. Even his nearest forerunners, in seamanship or in map-making[33]
were strikingly different from himself. They were too much in the spirit
of Ptolemy and of ancient science; they neglected fact for hypothesis,
for clever guessing, and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful, or
at least disappointing.

[Footnote 33: Except the draughtsmen of the Portolani.]

It was true enough that each generation of Christian thought was less in
fault than the one before it; but it was not till the fifteenth century,
till Henry had set the example, that exploration became systematic and
continuous. To Marco Polo and men like him we owe the beginnings of the
art and science of discovery among the learned; to the Portuguese is
due at least the credit of making it a thing of national interest, and
of freeing it from a false philosophy. To find out by incessant and
unwearying search what the world really was, and not to make known facts
fit in with the ideas of some thinker on what the world ought to be,
this we found to be the main difference between Cosmas or even Ptolemy
and any true leader of discovery. For a real advance of knowledge, fancy
must follow experiment, and no merely hypothetical system or Universe as
shewn in Holy Scripture, would do any longer. We have come to the time
when explorers were not Ptolemaics or Strabonians or Scripturists, but
Naturalists--men who examined things afresh, for themselves.

These various objects are all involved in the one central aim of
discovery, but they are not lost in it. To know this world we live in
and to teach men the new knowledge was the first thing, which makes
Henry what he is in universal history; his other aims are those of his
time and his nation, but they are not less a part of his life.

And he succeeded in them all; if in part his work was for all time and
in part seemed to pass away after a hundred years, that was due to the
exhaustion of his people. What he did for his countrymen was realised by
others, but the start, the inspiration, was his own. He persevered for
fifty years (1412-60) till within sight of the goal, and though he died
before the full result of his work was seen, it was none the less his
due when it came.

We find these results put down to the credit of others, but if Columbus
gave Castille and Leon a new world in 1492, if Da Gama reached