Almost coeval with the advent of these intellects was the
invention of printing with movable type. Gutenberg was born during
the first decade of the century, and his associates and others
credited with the invention not many years afterwards. If we
accept the principle on which I am basing my argument, that in
bringing out the springs of our progress we should assign the
first place to the birth of those psychic agencies which started
men on new lines of thought, then surely was the fifteenth the
wonderful century.
Let us not forget that, in assigning the actors then born to their
places, we are not narrating history, but studying a special phase
of evolution. It matters not for us that no university invited
Leonardo to its halls, and that his science was valued by his
contemporaries only as an adjunct to the art of engineering. The
great fact still is that he was the first of mankind to propound
laws of motion. It is not for anything in Luther's doctrines that
he finds a place in our scheme. No matter for us whether they were
sound or not. What he did towards the evolution of the scientific
investigator was to show by his example that a man might question
the best-established and most venerable authority and still live--
still preserve his intellectual integrity--still command a hearing
from nations and their rulers.
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