The crusaders had no commission from heaven for this business--they were not the agents of God, but only pretenders--and the church of to-day has no more right to pretend to save the world than the crusaders had to deliver the holy sepulchre from the so-called Pagans. The one and the others are alike impostors upon a credulous world. The crusades did nothing in the matter of rescuing the Holy Land. In this respect they were failures. The God of hosts did not lead them on to certain victory. But if they did not secure what they aimed at, they found something infinitely better--a wider knowledge of the world.
The intercourse between these different peoples which was occasioned by the marching of armies through their lands, gave new ideas to all; broke up the feudal system, and serfdom, secured the supremacy of a common law over the independent jurisdiction of the chiefs who claimed the right of private wars. In a word, it was the origin of Europe, the first great awakening of the intellect of the masses.
Not only were the old manners and customs changed, but there was stimulated in society an increased mental activity; and the narrow routine in which it had been accustomed to move was destroyed. Society began its new transformations into governments and nations, which says Guizot, is the characteristic of modern civilization.
The causes which mostly disturbed or accelerated the normal progress of society in antiquity were the appearance of great men. In modern times the appearance of great inventions. Printing has secured the intellectual achievements of the past, and furnished a sure guarantee of future progress. Gunpowder and military machinery have rendered the triumph of barbarians impossible. Steam has united nations in the closest bonds. Innumerable mechanical contrivances have given a decisive preponderance to that industrial element which has colored all the developments of our civilization. The leading characteristics of modern societies are in consequence marked out much more by the triumphs of inventive skill than by the sustained energy of moral causes. ("Lecky's History of European Morals," vol. 1, p. 126.)
It is not necessary to point in what way the printing press, art, commerce, and science, have promoted the progress of the race. It is so apparent to every intelligent reader that these have been the stepping stones over which we have passed from barbarism to civilization, that amplification is unnecessary.