Therefore, no single event has more puzzled historians
than the sudden, unexplained appearance of at least two new
natural forces of the highest educational value in mechanics, for
the first time within record of history. Literally, these two
forces seemed to drop from the sky at the precise moment when the
Cross on one side and the Crescent on the other, proclaimed the
complete triumph of the Civitas Dei. Had the Manichean doctrine
of Good and Evil as rival deities been orthodox, it would alone
have accounted for this simultaneous victory of hostile powers.
Of the compass, as a step towards demonstration of the dynamic
law, one may confidently say that it proved, better than any
other force, the widening scope of the mind, since it widened
immensely the range of contact between nature and thought. The
compass educated. This must prove itself as needing no proof.
Of Greek fire and gunpowder, the same thing cannot certainly be
said, for they have the air of accidents due to the attraction of
religious motives. They belong to the spiritual world; or to the
doubtful ground of Magic which lay between Good and Evil. They
were chemical forces, mostly explosives, which acted and still
act as the most violent educators ever known to man, but they
were justly feared as diabolic, and whatever insolence man may
have risked towards the milder teachers of his infancy, he was an
abject pupil towards explosives.
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