The Life of Columbus | Page 2

of the deeds of the discoverers
and conquerors of the New World, much less to give a condensed
memoir of each of them.
It has, therefore, been necessary to rearrange and add considerably to
these materials, and for this assistance I am indebted to the skill and
research of Mr. Herbert Preston Thomas.
Perhaps there are few of the great personages in history who have been
more talked about and written about than Christopher Columbus, the
discoverer of America. It might seem, therefore, that there is very little
that is new to be said about him. I do not think, however, that this is
altogether the case. Absorbed in, and to a certain extent overcome by
the contemplation of the principal event, we have sometimes, perhaps,

been mistaken as to the causes which led to it. We are apt to look upon
Columbus as a person who knew that there existed a great undiscovered
continent, and who made his way directly to the discovery of that
continent--springing at one bound from the known to the unknown.
Whereas, the dream of Columbus's life was to make his way by an
unknown route to what was known, or to what he considered to be
known. He wished to find out an easy pathway to the territories of
Kublai Khan, or Prester-John.
Neither were his motives such as have been generally supposed. They
were, for the most part, purely religious. With the gold gained from
potentates such as Kublai Khan, the Holy Sepulchre was to be rebuilt,
and the Catholic Faith was to be spread over the remotest parts of the
earth.
Columbus had all the spirit of a crusader, and, at the same time, the
investigating nature of a modern man of science. The Arabs have a
proverb that a man is more the son of the age in which he lives than of
his own father. This was not so with Columbus; he hardly seems to
belong at all to his age. At a time when there was never more of
worldliness and self-seeking; when Alexander Borgia was Pope; when
Louis the Eleventh reigned in France, Henry the Seventh in England,
and Ferdinand the Catholic in Arragon and Castille--about the three last
men in the world to become crusaders--Columbus was penetrated with
the ideas of the twelfth century, and would have been a worthy
companion of Saint Louis in that pious king's crusade.
Again, at a time when Aristotle and "the Angelic Doctor" ruled the
minds of men with an almost unexampled tyranny: when science was
more dogmatic than theology; when it was thought a sufficient and
satisfactory explanation to say that bodies falling to the earth descended
because it is their nature to descend--Columbus regarded natural
phenomena with the spirit of inductive philosophy that would belong to
a follower of Lord Bacon.
Perhaps it will be found that a very great man seldom does belong to
his period, as other men do to theirs. Machiavelli [1] says that the way
to renovate states is always to go back to first principles, especially to

the first principles upon which those states were founded. The same
law, if law it be, may hold good as regards the renovation of any
science, art, or mode of human action. The man who is too closely
united in thought and feeling with his own age, is seldom the man
inclined to go back to these first principles.
[Footnote 1: Machiavelli was contemporary with Columbus. No two
men could have been more dissimilar; and Machiavelli was thoroughly
a product of his age, and a man who entirely belonged to it.]
It is very noticeable in Columbus that he was it most dutiful,
unswerving, and un-inquiring son of the Church. The same man who
would have taken nothing for granted in scientific research, and would
not have held himself bound by the authority of the greatest names in
science, never ventured for a moment to trust himself as a discoverer on
the perilous sea of theological investigation.
In this respect Las Casas, though a churchman, was very different from
Columbus. Such doctrines as that the Indians should be somewhat
civilized before being converted, and that even baptism might be
postponed to instruction,--doctrines that would have found a ready
acceptance from the good bishop--would have met with small response
from the soldierly theology of Columbus.
The whole life of Columbus shows how rarely men of the greatest
insight and foresight, and also of the greatest perseverance, attain the
exact ends they aim at. In this respect all such men partake the career of
the alchemists, who did not transmute other metals into gold, but made
valuable discoveries in chemistry. So, with Columbus. He did not
rebuild the Holy Sepulchre; he did not lead a new crusade; he did not
find