Such were the geographical ideas of the North at the close of the Middle Ages, when the period of the great discoveries was at hand; they were vague and obscure, and the mists had settled once more over large regions which had been formerly known; but out in the mists lay mythical islands and countries in the north and west.
JOHN CABOT AND THE ENGLISH DISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA
[Sidenote: Awakening of geographical research]
Over the cloud-bridge of illusion lies the path of human progress. The greatest achievements in history have been brought about more by the aid of ideas than of truth. Religious illusions have ennobled the rude masses and raised them to higher forms of society; in the domain of science intuition and hypothesis have led to fresh victories, as also in geographical exploration; there too illusions, like a fata Morgana, have impelled men forward to great discoveries.
It is true that Columbus's plan was based on the correct idea that the world was round; but if he had known the real distance of India--if he had not been fettered by the ancient dogmas of the Greeks about the great extension of the continent to the east, and their low estimate of the earth's circumference, which made India appear so enticingly near--if he had not believed in myths of lands in the west--he certainly would never have been the discoverer of a new world.
The people of the Middle Ages lived, as we have seen, to a great extent on remnants of the geographical knowledge and conceptions of the Greeks. It was the age of superstition and speculation; with the exception of the Norsemen and the Arabs, and in some degree also the Irish monks, there was during the earlier part of this period no enterprise that broke through the bounds of the known, except in the mythical world of fancy. It was not until the Crusades that the horizon began to be widened. The eastern trade of the Italian republics and the development of capable Italian seamen were of great significance. At an early date they made discoveries along the west coast of Africa. Of even greater importance was it that the Portuguese learned seamanship from them, and no doubt from the Arabs as well, and displayed great enterprise on the ocean along the shores of Africa, finding groups of islands in the west, and finally the Azores in 1427; but these must have been discovered earlier, since similar islands occur on Italian maps of the fourteenth century (cf. the Catalan Atlas of 1375).