The great flood was the seventeenth century. That was the time of change, the hanging moment of instability in which men like Cromwell and Newton cou… - Jacob Bronowski

These are the moments when the powerful mind or the forceful character feels the ferment of the times, when his thoughts quicken, and when he can inject into the uncertainties of others the creative ideas which will strengthen them with purpose. At such a moment the man who can direct others, in thought or in action, can remake the world.

These frozen faces, these frozen frames in a film that is running down, mark a civilisation which failed to take the first step on the ascent of rational knowledge. That is the failure of the New World cultures, dying in their own symbolic Ice Age.

We become more and more aware that what we think about the world is not what the world is but what the human animal sees of the world.