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The history of civilization has been advanced through the operation of various and diverse motives in individual men and groups or communities of men. Almost every motive that has carried civilized men into regions hitherto unknown has resulted in some enlargement of the borders of civilization, even though this has not been an avowed end. In almost every movement that has enlarged the horizon of man's knowledge of the earth, or widened the domain of civilized society, men have acted without either of these ends in view. The occasions when discoverers or explorers or pioneers have made the widening of our knowledge for knowledge's sake, or the advancement of the limits of civilized life, their conscious or avowed end have been the exception rather than the rule.

The Phœnicians, in the early centuries, did much to enlarge civilized man's knowledge of the earth, and to carry westward through the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, the knowledge and civilized life of the Orient, but the motive in their westward movement was commerce