Page:The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind.djvu/82



into the minds of their generations, and enabled them to rise in the scale of nations by adapting themselves to the circumstances of the times. Religion, industry, state, education, and literature have been consciously transformed by the heroic efforts of such great men of the world, and these conscious and artificial transformations of the several aspects of social life have been the constituents of a new environment and thus the seeds of Renaissance.

Thus it is not the forces and conditions of the existing world alone that govern human affairs and control the fortunes of movements, for these forces and conditions themselves may be modified, re-arranged, and regulated by man so as to give rise to new circumstances and situations. The causes of revolutions lie