When at length the realistic mind perceived that here was a natural fact upon which prayers, thanksgiving, sacrifice, idolatry, and the pretentions of magic were all alike wasted, the spiritual part of us no doubt had been willing to accept the sentence. Not so the earthy and lusty part. The curse was heavy. There was never a risk man would not take, no kind of heroic exertion he would spare himself, to escape the evil, the boredom, the drudgery of repetitious toil. From such puerile motivation came the Age of Discovery, then physical science, purposeful mechanical invention, the industrial era, and all the artificial marvels of the modern world. These effects are historically traceable; and, if it should occur to you to wonder why they are so much more vivid and astonishing in the West than in the East, that is easily explained. The European mind went on with the phantasy of an earthly paradise of plenty and leisure after the Oriental mind in weariness of wisdom had given it up. Until four hundred years ago the Europeans believed that somewhere in the world was a fabulous land whose inhabitants lived as in dreams, eating and drinking from golden vessels, wearing priceless jewels like common beads, sated with ease and luxury. King, courts, astronomers and navigators believed this. The vulgar fancy was for a place such as Cockaigne of the medieval ballads, where all features of the landscape were good to eat or drink and nobody ever was obliged to work. In quest of this mythical region the pioneer feats of circumnavigation were performed. What a disparity between the character of the motive and the shape of the dead!—or is it that men do not know their motives? The earth was explored. It was found to be round and full of labour. This, of course, was a terrible disappointment. The ceaseless mind then turned to alchemy with the idea that base metals were changeable into gold; from this came chemistry and the study of matter and physical phenomena in a new way, taking nothing for granted. This was the beginning of true Science. As to what might come of it practically there was at first only the rudest kind of notion. Dimly it was understood that exact knowledge must somehow increase man’s power, give him control of the elementary circumstance, enable him perhaps to command that which hitherto he had got by hazard. When a great body of fact-knowledge had been accumulated, men began to see little by little how it might be dynamically applied. Then the epoch of Mechanical Invention.