MDDM ch.29: hooded, Scythe-bearing Figure

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

"As into the Lanthorn-Light comes a hooded, Scythe-bearing Figure..."
[294.12]

"At one time the effects of the scientific revolution, and the 
changes contemporary with it, would be masked by the persistence
of our classical traditions and education, which still decided so
much of the character of the eighteenth century in England and
France, for example. At another time these effects would be
concealed through that popular attachment to religion which
so helped to form the the character of even the nineteenth 
century in this country. The very strength of our conviction
that ours was a Graeco-Roman civilisation- the very way in
which we allowed the art-historians and the philologists to make
us think that this thing we call "the modern world" was the
product of the rennaissance- the inelasticity of our historical
concepts, in fact- helped to conceal the radical nature of the 
changes that had taken place and the colossal possibilities
that lay in the seeds sown by the seventeenth century.

The seventeenth century, indeed, did not merely bring a new
factor into history, in the way we often assume- one that
must just be added, so to speak, to the other permanent 
factors. The new factor immediately began to elbow the other
ones away, pushing them from their central position. 

Indeed, it began imediately to seek control of the rest, as the
apostles of the new movement had declared their intention
from the very start.

The result was the emergence of a new kind of Western
Civilization, which... operated on tradition... dissolving it and
having eyes for nothing save a future of brave new worlds.
It was a civilization that could cut itself away from the 
Graeco-Roman heritage in general, away from Christianity
itself- only too confident in its power to exist independent of
anything of the kind. We know now that what was emerging
towards the end of the seventeenth century was a 
civilization exhilaratingly new perhaps, but strange as Ninveh
and Babylon. That is why, since the rise of Christianity, there
is no landmark in history that is worthy to be compared with this."

Herbert Butterfield, The Origns of Modern Science, Revised Ed.
pp 201-202.