The unadvanced condition of physical science prevented a large application of the less obvious natural powers to production, or the extensive use of machinery, which has acquired such an immense development as a factor in modern industry. The imperfection of geographical knowledge and of the means of communication and transport were impediments to the growth of foreign commerce. These obstacles arose necessarily out of the mere immaturity of the industrial life of the periods in question. But more deeply rooted impediments to a vigorous and expansive economic practical system existed in the characteristic principles of the civilisation of antiquity. Some writers have attempted to set aside the distinction between the ancient and modern worlds as imaginary or unimportant, and, whilst admitting the broad separation between ourselves and the theocratic peoples of the East, to represent the Greeks and Romans as standing on a substantially similar ground of thought, feeling, and action with the Western populations of our own time.
John Kells Ingram
Keyword : Imitation, Emphatically, Distinction, Ancient, Degraded, Constitution, Ancient Monotony, Inexhaustible Super Natural