Men began to inquire into causes and effects, to doubt certain things, to seek themselves for the truth, and so the Renaissance came. With it came a greater love for the beautiful, a greater joy in life, a fresh zest for the good of this world, a new passion for discovery, a thirst for adventure, and, it must also be confessed a new laxity of living and a new greed for gold. Christian Europe was about to burst its narrow bounds. It could not be repressed nor confined to its old limitations. It could never turn backward. Of all the great changes which have come over life and thought, probably none are greater than those which saw the transition from the mediæval to the modern world. Trade with the East.--Articles of Trade.--Now we must go back for a moment and pursue an old inquiry further. Whence came all these beautiful and inviting wares that had produced new tastes and passions in Europe? The Italian traders drew them from the Levant, but the Levant had not produced them. Neither pepper, spices, sugarcane, costly gems, nor rich silks, were produced on the shores of the Mediterranean. Only the rich tropical countries of the East were capable of growing these rare plants, and up to that time of delivering to the delver many precious stones. India, the rich Malaysian archipelago, the kingdom of China,--these are the lands and islands which from time immemorial have given up their treasures to be forwarded far and wide to amaze and delight the native of colder and less productive lands. Routes of Trade to the Far East.--Three old sailing and caravan routes connect the Mediterranean with the Far East. They are so old that we can not guess when men first used them. They were old in the days of Solomon and indeed very ancient when Alexander the Great conquered the East. One of these routes passed through the Black Sea, and across the Caspian Sea to Turkestan to those strange and romantic ancient cities, Bokhara and Samarkand. Thence it ran northeasterly across Asia, entering China from the north. Another crossed Syria and went down through Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean, A third began in Egypt and went through the Red Sea, passing along the coast of Arabia to India. All of these had been in use for centuries, but by the year 1400 two had been closed. A fresh immigration of Turks, the Ottomans, in the fourteenth century came down upon the scourged country of the Euphrates and Syria, and although these Turks also embraced Mohammedanism, their hostility closed the first two routes and commerce over them has never since been resumed.