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Westward empire

Chapter 11: PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.
By Elias Lyman Magoon
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About This Book

The work presents a broad, interpretive survey of human history that treats progress as a westward-moving drama under providential guidance. It sketches successive cultural ages and traces how literature, art, science, religion, and commerce have shifted emphasis across eras. Rather than detailed biographies, it compiles a compact nomenclature of celebrated figures and landmark events to demonstrate continuity and cumulative improvement. The author highlights recurring patterns of expansion, innovation, and renewal, arguing that major enterprises and population movements have tended to unfold toward the west. The treatment privileges grand outlines and synthesis over granular documentation.

PROLOGUE OF MOTTOES.

"Thy foot will not stumble, if thou ascribest every thing good and noble to Providence, whether it takes place among the Greeks or ourselves, for God is everywhere the author of all that is good. Some things, indeed, originate immediately with Him, as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, others again mediately, as philosophy. And even this, he appears to have imparted immediately to the Greeks, until they were called by the Lord; for philosophy led the Greeks to Christ, as the law did the Jews."—Clemens of Alexandria.

"In the history of a war, we speak only of the generals, and those who performed actions of distinction. In like manner the battles of the human mind, if I may use the expression, have been won by a few intellectual heroes. The history of the development of art and its various forms may be therefore exhibited in the characteristic view of a number, by no means considerable, of elevated and creative minds."—Augustus William Schlegel.

"These individual lives, running like so many colored threads, through our record, may impart to it that personal interest and dramatic unity which otherwise it would lack."—Doctor Arnold.

"I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great."—Daniel, viii. 4.