Note 1 — Chapter I · THE NATURE AND NEED OF THE REFORMATION.

As Lord Acton has so well said, "The modern age did not proceed from the medieval by normal succession, with outward tokens of legitimate descent. Unheralded, it founded a new order of things, under a law of innovation, sapping the ancient reign of continuity. In those days Columbus subverted the notions of the world, and reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and power.... Luther broke the chain of authority and tradition at the strongest link; and Copernicus erected an invincible power that set for ever the mark of progress upon the time that was to come.... It was an awakening of new life; the world revolved in a different orbit, determined by influences unknown before. After many ages, persuaded of the headlong decline and impending dissolution of society, and governed by usage and the will of masters who were in their graves, the sixteenth century went forth armed for untried experience, and ready to watch with hopefulness a prospect of incalculable change" (Lecture on the Study of History, 1895, pp. 8, 9). "There are no true 'cycles' in human development; history never repeats itself; the Greco-Roman world has only distant analogies with the Feudal-Catholic world, just as this has only distant analogies with the Revolutionary world. The great phases of human civilisation are contrasted rather than compared; they differ as infancy, childhood, manhood, and senility differ in the individual" (Harrison on "Freeman's Method of History," in the 'Nineteenth Century' for November 1898).