For 40 Years Now Have
I Thus Been Engaged, And Wherever Man Has Sailed Hitherto On The Face
Of The Sea, Thither Have I Sailed Also.
I have been in constant
relation with men of learning, whether ecclesiastic or secular, Latins
and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and men of many a sect besides.
To
accomplish this my longing (to know the Secrets of the World) I found
the Lord favourable to my purposes; it is He who hath given me the
needful disposition and understanding. He bestowed upon me abundantly
the knowledge of seamanship: and of Astronomy He gave me enough to
work withal, and so with Geometry and Arithmetic.... In the days of my
youth I studied works of all kinds, history, chronicles, philosophy,
and other arts, and to apprehend these the Lord opened my
understanding. Under His manifest guidance I navigated hence to the
Indies; for it was the Lord who gave me the will to accomplish that
task, and it was in the ardour of that will that I came before your
Highnesses. All those who heard of my project scouted and derided it;
all the acquirements I have mentioned stood me in no stead; and if in
your Highnesses, and in you alone, Faith and Constancy endured, to
Whom are due the Lights that have enlightened you as well as me, but
to the Holy Spirit?" (Quoted in Humboldt's Examen Critique, I. 17,
18.)
[3] Libri, however, speaks too strongly when he says: "The finest of all
the results due to the influence of Marco Polo is that of having
stirred Columbus to the discovery of the New World.
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