all familiar with the fact that the same
important idea (never before revealed in all the ages) occurs to separate
and widely distinct minds at about the same time. The invention of the
electric telegraph seemed to burst upon the world simultaneously from
many quarters--not perfect, perhaps, but the time for the idea had
come--and happy was it for the man who entertained it. We have agreed to
call Columbus the discoverer of America, but I suppose there is no doubt
that America had been visited by European, and probably Asiatic, people
ages before Columbus; that four or five centuries before him people from
northern Europe had settlements here; he was fortunate, however, in
"discovering" it in the fullness of time, when the world, in its
progress, was ready for it. If the Greeks had had gunpowder,
electro-magnetism, the printing press, history would need to be
rewritten. Why the inquisitive Greek mind did not find out these things
is a mystery upon any other theory than the one we are considering.

And it is as mysterious that China, having gunpowder and the art of
printing, is not today like Germany.

There seems to me to be a progress, or an intention of progress, in the
world, independent of individual men. Things get on by all sorts of
instruments, and sometimes by very poor ones. There are times when new
thoughts or applications of known principles seem to throng from the
invisible for expression through human media, and there is hardly ever an
important invention set free in the world that men do not appear to be
ready cordially to receive it. Often we should be justified in saying
that there was a widespread expectation of it. Almost all the great
inventions and the ingenious application of principles have many
claimants for the honor of priority.

On any other theory than this, that there is present in the world an
intention of progress which outlasts individuals, and even races, I
cannot account for the fact that, while civilizations decay and pass
away, and human systems go to pieces, ideas remain and accumulate. We,
the latest age, are the inheritors of all the foregoing ages. I do not
believe that anything of importance has been lost to the world. The
Jewish civilization was torn up root and branch, but whatever was
valuable in the Jewish polity is ours now. We may say the same of the
civilizations of Athens and of Rome; though the entire organization of
the ancient world, to use Mr. Froude's figure, colla