We have now seen--briefly, it is true, but perhaps with sufficient fulness--how Columbus in various ways had received his education. If called upon to sum up the impressions that he had gained in the course of his experience at Genoa and Lisbon before 1484, the result would be something like the following: First, he acquired a very definite and positive belief in the sphericity of the earth. Secondly, through Toscanelli, Cardinal d’Ailly, and others, he had likewise received an equally definite and positive impression that the size of the earth was much less than it actually is. His belief was that Japan would be reached by sailing west a distance not greater than the distance which actually intervenes between Portugal and the eastern coasts of America. In the third place, these beliefs were confirmed by certain vague reports of sailors that had been driven to the far west, and by such articles as had been thrown by the waters upon the islands lying west of Portugal and northern Africa. What may be called the approaches to the discovery of America were, in their general characteristics, not unlike those which have generally preceded other great discoveries and inventions. Seldom in the history of the human race has the conception and the consummation of a great discovery been the product of a single brain. The final achievement is ordinarily only the culminating act of the more logical mind and the more dauntless courage. Such was the case with Columbus. The more one becomes familiar with the thought and the enterprise of the fifteenth century, the more clearly one sees how impossible it would have been for America to have long remained undiscovered, even if there had been no Columbus. We shall hereafter see how a Portuguese fleet, in the year 1500, when sailing for Good Hope, and with no thought of a western continent, was driven by storms to the coast of Brazil. But none of these facts should detract from the credit of Columbus. The great man of such a time is the one who shows that he knows the law of development, and, bringing all possible knowledge to his service, works, with a lofty courage and an unflagging persistency and enthusiasm, for the object of his devotion in accordance with the strict laws of historical sequence. Such was the method of Columbus. Others, perhaps, were as familiar with all the geographical facts and theories with which he had so long been storing his mind; others even saw as clearly the conclusions to which these facts and theories so distinctly pointed: but he alone, of all the men of his generation, was possessed with the lofty enthusiasm, the ardent prescience, the unhasting and unresting courage, that were the harbingers of glorious success. CHAPTER II. ATTEMPTS TO SECURE ASSISTANCE.