Invention: The Master-key to Progress
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Title: Invention: The Master-key to Progress
Author: Bradley A. Fiske
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVENTION: THE MASTER-KEY TO PROGRESS ***
INVENTION, THE MASTER-KEY
TO PROGRESS
INVENTION
THE MASTER-KEY
TO PROGRESS
BY
REAR-ADMIRAL BRADLEY A. FISKE, LL.D.
UNITED STATES NAVY
Former Aid for Operations of the Fleet, President U. S. Naval
Institute, Gold Medallist of U. S. Naval Institute, the Franklin
Institute and the Aero Club of America.
Author of "Electricity in Theory and Practice," "War Time in Manila,"
"The Navy as a Fighting Machine," "From Midshipman to
Rear-Admiral," "The Art of Fighting," etc.
Inventor of the Gun Director System, the Naval Telescope Sight, the
Stadimeter, the Turret Range Finder, the Horizometer,
the Torpedoplane, etc., etc., etc.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1921,
By E. P. Dutton & Company
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
To show that inventors have accomplished more than most persons
realize, not only in bringing forth new mechanisms, but in doing
creative work in many walks of life, is, in part, the object of this
book. To suggest what they may do, if properly encouraged, is its main
intention. For, since it is to inventors mainly that we owe all that
civilization is, it is to inventors mainly that we must look for all
that civilization can be made to be.
The mind of man cannot even conceive what wonders of beneficence
inventors may accomplish: for _the resources of invention are
infinite_.
The author is indebted to Ginn & Company, Boston, for the use of
illustrations from "General History for Colleges and High Schools,"
by Philip Van Ness Myers, and "Ancient Times, A History of the Early
World," by James Henry Breasted, and to George H. Doran Company, New
York, for the use of a map from "A History of Sea Power," by William
Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INVENTION IN PRIMEVAL TIMES 1
II. INVENTION IN THE ORIENT 24
III. INVENTION IN GREECE 51
IV. INVENTION IN ROME: ITS RISE AND FALL 81
V. INVENTION OF THE GUN AND OF PRINTING 101
VI. COLUMBUS, COPERNICUS, GALILEO AND OTHERS 125
VII. THE RISE OF ELECTRICITY, STEAM AND CHEMISTRY 148
VIII. THE AGE OF STEAM, NAPOLEON AND NELSON 179
IX. INVENTIONS IN STEAM, ELECTRICITY, AND CHEMISTRY CREATE
A DANGEROUS ERA 203
X. CERTAIN IMPORTANT CREATIONS OF INVENTION, AND THEIR
BENEFICENT INFLUENCE 231
XI. INVENTION AND GROWTH OF LIBERAL GOVERNMENT AND AMERICAN
CIVIL WAR 255
XII. INVENTION OF THE MODERN MILITARY MACHINE, TELEPHONE,
PHONOGRAPH AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 279
XIII. THE CONQUEST OF THE ETHER--MOVING PICTURES--RISE OF
JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES 301
XIV. THE FRUITION OF INVENTION 322
XV. THE MACHINE OF CIVILIZATION, AND THE DANGEROUS IGNORANCE
CONCERNING IT, SHOWN BY STATESMEN 333
XVI. THE FUTURE 341
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Carvings in Ivory and in Stone of Cavern Walls made by the
Hunters of the Middle Stone Age 3
Early Babylonian Signs, Showing Their Pictorial Origin 27
Villa of an Egyptian Noble 34
The Pyramids of Gizeh 36
Assyrians Flaying Prisoners Alive 44
Two Cretan Vases 52
Insurgent Captives Brought Before Darius 58
The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria in the Hellenistic
Age 77
Triumphal Procession from the Arch of Titus 96
The Printing of Books 113
Portuguese Voyages and Possessions 126
Hero's Engines 150
Hero's Altar Engine 151
Leupold's Engine 154
INVENTION, THE MASTER-KEY
TO PROGRESS
INVENTION, THE MASTER-KEY TO PROGRESS
CHAPTER I
INVENTION IN PRIMEVAL TIMES
Our original ancestors dwelt in caves and wildernesses; had no sewed
or fabricated clothing of any kind; subsisted on roots and nuts and
berries; possessed no arts of any sort; were ignorant to a degree that
we cannot imagine, and were little above the brutes in their mode of
living. Today, a considerable fraction of the people who dwell upon the
earth enjoy a civilization so fine that it seems to have no connection
with the brutish conditions of primeval life. Yet, as these pages show,
a perfectly plain series of inventions can be seen, starting from the
old conditions and building up the new.
The progress of man during the countless ages of prehistoric times is
hidden from our knowledge, except in so far as it has been revealed
to us by ruins of ancient cities, by prehistoric utensils of many
kinds, and by inscriptions carved on monuments and tablets. The sharp
dividing line between prehistoric times and historic times, seems to be
that made by the art of writing; for this epochal invention rendered
possible the recording of events, and the consequent beginning of
history.
Of prehistoric times we have, of course, no written record; and we
have but the most general means of estimating how many millenniums
ago man first had his being. Geological considerations indicate a
beginning so indefinitely and exceedingly remote that the imagination
may lose itself in speculations as to his mode of living during those
forever-hidden centuries that dragged along, before man had advanced
so far in his progress toward civilization as to make and use the rude
utensils which the researches of antiquarians have revealed.
Inasmuch as the most important employment of man from his first breath
until his last has always been the struggle to preserve his life;
inasmuch as the endeavor of primeval man to defend himself against
wild beasts must have been extremely bitter (for many were larger
and stronger than he), and inasmuch as man eventually achieved the
mastery over them, one seems forced to conclude that man overcame wild
beasts by employing some means to assist his bodily strength, and that
probably his first invention was a weapon.
The first evidences of man's achievements that we have are rude
implements of stone and flint, evidently shaped by some force guided
by some intelligence;--doubtless the force of human hands, guided by
the intelligence of human minds. Many such have been found in caves and
gravel-beds over all the world. They were rough and crude, and indicate
a rough and crude but nevertheless actual stage of civilization. Some
call this the Old Stone Age and others call it the Early Stone Age.
Besides stone and flint, bones, horns and tusks were used. Among the
implements made were daggers, fish-hooks, needles, awls and heads of
arrows and harpoons. One of the most interesting revelations of those
rude and immeasurably ancient implements is the fact that man, even in
those times, possessed the artistic sense; for on some of them can be
seen rough but clear engravings of natural objects, and even of wild
animals.
[Illustration: Carvings in Ivory (1 and 3-7) and in Stone of Cavern
Walls (2), made by the Hunters of the Middle Stone Age]
Men naturally supported themselves mainly by hunting and fishing,
as savages do now; and it was because they had invented suitable
implements and weapons for practicing those necessary arts, that
their efforts were successful. The first weapon was probably the
fist-hatchet, a piece of sharpened flint about nine inches long, that
he grasped in his hand. At some time during the centuries of the Old
Stone Age, someone invented a much finer weapon, that continued to be
one of the most important that was known, until the invention of the
gun, and is used even now in savage lands--the bow and arrow. What a
tremendous advantage this weapon was in fighting wild beasts (and also
men not possessing it) it is not hard for us to see; for the arrow
tipped with flint or bone, could be shot over distances far greater
than the spear or javelin could be thrown, and with sufficient force
to kill. The club and spear had probably been devised before, for they
were simpler and more easily imagined and constructed.
How the bow and arrow came to be invented we have no intimation. The
invention of the club and spear did not probably involve much creative
effort, so simple were those instruments, and so like the branches
that could be broken from the trees. Yet, to the untrained mind of the
primeval savage, the idea of sharpening a straight branch of wood into
a fine point at the end, in order that penetration through the skin
might be facilitated, must have come as an inspiration. No such thing
as a spear exists as a spear in nature, and therefore the making of a
spear was a creative act. To us, the use of the spear as a projectile
may not seem to have required the inventive faculty--unless the hurling
of stones may also be supposed to have required it. It may be, however,
that with the dull mind of primeval men, even the idea of using stones
or javelins as projectiles was the result of a distinct, and perhaps
startling inspiration.
The invention of the bow and arrow was one of the first order of
brilliancy, and would be so even now. It is not easy to think of any
simple accident as accounting for the invention; because the bow and
arrow consists of three entirely independent parts--the straight
bar of wood, the string, and the arrow; for the bow was not a bow
until the string had been fastened to each end, and drawn so tight
that the bar of wood was forced into a bent shape, and held there at
great tension. When one realizes this, and realizes in addition the
countless centuries during which the bow and arrow held its sway, the
millions of men who have used it, and the important effect it has had
in the overcoming of wild beasts, and the deciding of many of the
critical battles of the world, he can hardly escape the conclusion
that the invention of the bow and arrow was one of the most important
occurrences in the history of mankind.
A still more important occurrence was the invention of making fire.
Probably less inventive effort was needed for this than for the bow and
arrow; for fire could be seen in the lightning and in trees struck by
lightning, and in the sparks that came forth when two hard stones were
struck together. The discovery of fire may have been made by accident;
but this does not mean that no invention was needed for devising and
producing the means whereby fire could be produced at will. To note
the fact of a phenomenon, say the production of fire when stones are
accidentally struck together, or the falling of an apple from a tree,
requires no special effort, and of itself brings forth no benefit; but
to reason from the appearance of the sparks to the production of an
apparatus for making fire at will; or to reason from the falling of an
apple to the enunciation of Newton's Law of Gravitation, is the kind of
successful mental effort that has produced the effects which it is the
endeavor of this humble book to indicate. These effects have combined
as progress has advanced, to put civilized man in a position relatively
to his natural surroundings very different from that held by primeval
man, and very different from that held by the brutes, both in primeval
days and now. Evidently, the effects have been made possible by some
faculty possessed by man and not by brutes. This faculty is usually
called reason, and is held to be a faculty by means of which man can
infer cause from effect, and effect from cause, and can remember events
and facts to a degree sufficient to enable him to hold them in his
mind, while reasoning about them.
But it seems impossible to explain the advent of even the oldest and
simplest inventions by the possession of reason only, using the word
reason in its ordinary sense; for it is obvious that no matter how
clearly a man could reason as between cause and effect, no matter how
great a student of all phenomena he might be, no matter how good a
memory he might have, he might nevertheless live for many years and
never invent anything. In fact, we see men at the present day who
possess great knowledge, splendid energy, keen powers of analysis,
high courage, and even great administrative talent, and yet who
are obviously deficient in originality, who seem to possess the
constructive faculty in only a small degree, and who seem incapable of
taking any step forward except on paths that have been plainly trod
before.
Countless instances can be cited of the persistence of men, even in
civilized lands, in following a certain practice for long periods,
until someone possessing the inventive faculty has devised a better
one. For the sake of brevity, only two cases, and those well known,
will be mentioned as illustrative. One was the invention of movable
type, and the other that of pointing the wood screw. Man had continued
for centuries to make blocks of wood or other material on which words
and phrases were engraved or cut, and then to print from them. Suddenly
a man in Germany (usually said to be John Guttenberg) made the change,
so slight in appearance and yet so tremendous in results, of cutting
only one letter on a block, and arranging and securing the blocks in
such a way as to enable him to print any word or words desired. This
did not occur until about the year 1434 A. D. Why had not someone
done this in all the long centuries? Surely it was not because men
of great reasoning faculties had not lived; for in the long interval
the civilization of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome
had flourished; and Plato, Aristotle, Cæsar and the great inventor
Archimedes had lived! Similarly, men continued to use in wood the same
flat pointed screw that they used in metals, boring the hole first in
the wood with a gimlet, and then entering the flat point of the screw
into the hole. Suddenly (but not until the nineteenth century A. D.)
an inventor made and patented a screw which came to a sharp point like
a gimlet, which could be forced into wood just as the gimlet was, and
then screwed into the wood without further ado. How can we explain the
curious fact that countless men of reason, intelligence and mechanical
skill had continued century after century to bore into wood with
gimlets, and then follow the gimlet with flat-pointed screws?
The explanation seems to be expressed in the phrase, "the idea had
not occurred to them." Why had it not occurred to them? This question
cannot, of course, be answered convincingly; but it may be pointed out
that there is a small class of men to whom original ideas seem to come
of their own accord. The inventor of mechanical appliances is in this
class, and is perhaps its most conspicuous exemplar.
* * * * *
It may be pointed out, however, that the inventors of mechanical
appliances are not the only men to whom original conceptions come;
for original conceptions evidently come to the poets, the novelists,
the musical composers, the artists, the strategists, the explorers,
the statesmen, the philosophers, the founders of religions and the
initiators of all enterprises great and small. It may be pointed out
also that their mental processes are similar, and that they are best
described by the greatest of all poets in the lines--
"The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
Glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
These lines suggest that the first step in invention is made almost
without effort; that a picture, confused and dim but actual, is made
by the imagination on the mental retina; and that, after that, the
constructive faculties arrange the elements of the picture in such wise
as to produce a clear and definite entity.
Regarded in this way, the inventor of mechanical appliances suddenly
sees a confused and dim picture of an instrument or a mechanism (or a
part of it) that he has never seen with his bodily eyes; the musical
composer hears imperfectly and vaguely a new musical composition; the
sculptor sees a statue, the painter sees a new combination of objects
and colors producing a new effect, and the poet feels the stirring in
him of vague, but beautiful, or powerful or inspiring thoughts. If now
the picture is allowed to fade, or if the constructive faculty is not
able to make it into an actuality, or if the picture has not in itself
the elements which the state of civilization then prevailing make it
possible to embody in an entity, no invention of a mechanical appliance
is made, no plan of campaign, no musical composition, no statue, no
painting, no poem is produced.
If, however, the constructive effort develops successfully the
conception that the imagination made, and if the circumstances of time
and place are all propitious, then the art of making fire at will is
born, or Bonaparte's suggestion at Toulon is made, or the strains of
Beethoven's music inspire the world, or the statue of Moses is carved,
or the Immaculate Conception is pointed, or Hamlet is written, or the
electric telegraph binds the peoples of the earth together.
The inventor in mechanics, the sculptor, the painter, the novelist and
the poet embody their creations in material forms that are enduring
and definite, and constitute evidences of their work, which sometimes
endure throughout long periods. The architect and the constructing
engineer are able similarly to produce lasting and useful monuments
to their skill; but it can hardly be declared that their work is
characterized by quite so much of originality and invention, because
of the restrictions by which the practice of their arts is bound. It
is, in fact, hard to conceive of a bridge very different in principle
or design from bridges that had been built before; and while it is not
difficult to conceive of an engine different in principle and design
from previous ones, yet we realize that the points of novelty in such
an engine would be attributable more to invention than to engineering.
This is because the arts of engineering and architecture rest on
principles that have long since been proved to be correct, and on
practices that are the results of long experience; whereas one of the
main characteristics of invention is novelty.
It is true that many of the most important inventions have been made
by engineers; but this has been because some engineers, like Ericsson,
have been inventors also. But it is also true that only a small
proportion of the engineers have made original inventions; and it is
equally true that many inventions have failed--or have been slow in
achieving success--because of lack of engineering skill in construction
or design. These facts show that the work of the inventor is very
different from that of the engineer, and that the inventor and the
engineer are very different people, though an engineer and an inventor
sometimes live together inside of the same skin. In fact, it is by a
combination of inventive genius and engineering talent in one man that
the greatest results in invention have been achieved; though great
results have often followed the intimate cooperation of an inventor and
an engineer, the two being separate men.
It is in the latter way that important advances have usually been
made; and it is somewhat analogous to the way in which authors and
publishers, actors and managers, promoters and capitalists cooperate.
But while the individuals whose inventions have taken the form of
new creations, such as novel machines and books and paintings, have
received the clearest recognition as men of genius, may not the
inventive faculty be needed in other fields and be required in other
kinds of work? If an instrument is produced by the joint exercise of
imagination and constructive talent, is not every puzzle worked out,
and every problem solved, and every constructive work accomplished by
the similar exercise of those same faculties?
It may seem obvious that this question should be answered in the
negative, and so it unquestionably should be. But there always has been
much cloudiness as to what constitutes invention in our own minds;
and it must be admitted that the dividing line is not immediately
obvious between invention and the art of meeting difficulties with
resourcefulness, or between invention and the act of solving any of the
perplexing riddles of our daily lives.
It may be declared with confidence, however, that the difference
between invention and any one of these other acts is that, while
invention ends in performing such acts, it begins with an exercise
of the imagination. A man who designs an engine to fulfil a stated
purpose, who solves any problem whatever that is presented to him from
outside, simply accomplishes a task that is given to him to accomplish;
whereas, while the inventor accomplishes a similar task, he does it
as a second step in a task that was not given him to accomplish, but
that he himself had pictured to himself. The act of inventing consists
of three separate acts--the act of conceiving, the act of developing,
and the act of producing. Of these three acts, that of conceiving is
obviously not only the first, but also the most important, distinctive
and unusual.
For every real invention, there have been countless constructive acts.
In the invention of the bow and arrow, the conception was probably
instantaneous and unbidden. The subsequent work of developing the
conception into material and practical shape was probably one of long
duration, consisting of many acts, accompanied with many difficulties
and disappointments, and accomplished finally in the face of much
active and passive opposition.
* * * * *
The Old Stone Age gradually developed into the New Stone Age at
different times in different localities, as successive improvements
in implements were made. The New Stone Age was distinguished from its
predecessor mainly by the fact that the principal weapons and utensils
were formed into regular shapes, polished into smoothness, and in many
cases ground to sharp points and keen cutting edges. These improvements
made the implements more effective both as weapons and as utensils, by
facilitating not only cutting but penetration.
How much invention was needed to make these improvements, it is not
easy to decide; but probably only a little was required, and that of an
order not very original or high; for the improvements were rather in
detail than principle. Perhaps their character can be best indicated by
saying that they were improvements, rather than inventions of a basic
kind.
It may here be pointed out that the act of improving upon an invention
already existing may be almost wholly a constructive act, performed
on a visible and tangible material object, and not on a picture made
by the imagination on the mind. In such a case, the act of improving
belongs rather in the category of engineering than of invention, for
the reason that it involves only a slight use of the imagination. It
may also be pointed out, however, that a mere improvement may be, and
sometimes has been an invention of the highest order. As a rule, of
course, basic inventions have been the most brilliant and also the most
important.
But it was not only by polished instruments of stone and bone that
the New Stone Age was characterized; for we find in the records which
our ancestors unintentionally left us, many evidences that they had
invented the arts of making pottery, of spinning and weaving, and
of constructing houses of a simple kind. This Age was characterized
by many improvements besides those relating to articles of stone,
and was a period far in advance of its predecessor on the march to
civilization. It was marked by the domestication of animals and plants,
the tilling of the soil, and a gradual change from a purely savage and
nomadic mode of life. This change was first to a pastoral life, in
which men lived in fixed habitations and tended their flocks; thence
to an agricultural life, in which men cultivated the ground over large
areas and grew crops of cereals and vegetables; and then to a still
more settled existence, in which men congregated in villages and towns.
Certainly, the race had taken the first steps, and had started on the
path which it has since pursued.
In order to make the start and to proceed afterwards in the line
begun, many physical, mental and spiritual attributes were needed
and employed, that mere brutes did not possess, and because of which
the civilization of the Old Stone Age had been begun and gradually
developed. Of these faculties, those principally characteristic seem
to have been mental; and among those faculties, invention, reason,
construction and memory seem to have been the most important. It would
be unreasonable to declare any one of those faculties to have been
more important than the others; but it can hardly be denied that the
first steps in the march of progress should be credited to invention.
Clearly, it was the weapons and utensils of the Old Stone Age that made
possible the subduing and subsequent domestication of certain animals,
such as the horse, the cow, the dog, the sheep and the goat.
It may be pointed out, in passing, that many animals have not been
domesticated even at this late day--such as the tiger, the eagle
and the bear. But, equally, certain tribes of men have not been
domesticated. It may be that in both the undomesticated men and the
undomesticated brutes, the mind is of such a character that it cannot
assimilate even the first grains of knowledge, or make any effort
whatever of an inventive character.
There was one invention that was probably made in the Old Stone Age,
which must have needed considerable inventiveness to be developed as
highly as it was developed during the Old and New Stone Ages, and that
was language. The origin of language is, of course, hidden in the
impenetrable mystery of the childhood of the race; and it may be that
language was an original attribute of man. If we reason, however, that
the development of language must have been a continuing act from the
first, inferring it from the fact that it has been a continuing act
from the dawn of recorded history until now, and if we suppose that it
had a rise and a growth like those of other arts, we may reasonably
conclude that some man invented the plan of making his wants known by
the use of vocal sounds, uttered in accordance with a preconcerted
code; that the invention was only partially successful at first, and
that it was afterwards improved. That language was not a natural gift,
but rather the result of an invention and subsequent development, is
suggested by the fact that a child has to be taught to speak, but
does not have to be taught to exercise his natural functions, such as
breathing, eating, drinking, walking, etc.
Which was the first invention ever made by man, there is, of course,
no means of ascertaining; but it seems obvious that that of language
must have been among the first. The invention of weapons we may easily
imagine to have been actually the first, called for by the necessity
of defense against wild beasts and other men. Following the defense by
individual men of their individual lives, it seems logical to suppose
that a man and his wife, a man and his brother, and then groups of men,
banded together in their common defense against common foes. To further
their joint action, what would be more valuable than a language
consisting of vocal sounds, arranged in accordance with a simple code,
as a means of conveying information, issuing warnings, and giving
signals in emergencies, to insure concerted action?
That language should later be used for manifold other purposes would
be most natural; for many other arts have been invented primarily
to further man's first aim, the preservation of his life, and have
afterwards been employed for other purposes. The uses of clothing,
houses, knives, guns and of nearly all weapons are cases in point.
The New Stone Age seems to have passed gradually into the Age of
Copper, because doubtless of a more or less accidental discovery
when native copper was seen upon the ground, or when some copper ore
was subjected to fire. The metal, by reason of its great durability,
ductility, elasticity and strength, came to be used for many
purposes--the first use being probably in weapons; for weapons were the
main dependence of the people in their struggle against beasts.
A great advance was made when bronze was discovered, with which weapons
and tools of many kinds could be made that were harder than those of
copper. Then the Age of Bronze succeeded the Age of Copper. One can
hardly imagine that bronze was really invented; for it is difficult to
see how, knowing the softness of copper and tin, any primeval man could
have imagined a metal made from them much harder than either, and then
proceeded to make it by mixing about seven parts of copper with one
part of tin. The gradual improvement made in bronze implements, and the
different kinds of bronze that later appeared (made by altering the
proportions of tin and copper) were doubtless due more to constructive
and engineering methods than to pure invention; but nevertheless a
considerable amount of inventing must have been required; for one can
rarely effect any important improvement in any weapon, instrument or
tool, without first imagining the improvement, and then endeavoring to
effect it.
In fact, an overwhelming majority of the "inventions" for which
patents are issued by our Patent Office, are for mere improvements
over existing apparatus; and the bald fact that the thing accomplished
is only such an improvement, instead of the creation of something
different from everything else whatever, like the telephone or
phonograph, does not debar the achievement from being classed as an
invention. The pointed screw was merely an improvement over previous
forms of screw, and yet it was an invention of high originality,
novelty and importance. Obviously, improvements occupy various
positions not only in importance and scope, but also in the relative
degrees in which invention and construction were employed to bring them
into being.
It is held by some that no purely human act can possibly create
anything really new, that "there is nothing new under the sun," and
that therefore every so-called invention made by a man must be merely a
novel arrangement of already existing objects.
Of course, no man "creates" anything, in the sense that he makes
anything whatever out of nothing; but it is a well-known fact that he
has created many things in the sense that he has made many entities to
exist that had not existed before as such entities; for instance, man
made the speaking telephone to exist. The speaking telephone did not
exist before Bell invented it, and it did exist after he invented it.
To say that Bell did or did not create the telephone conveys a meaning
dependent wholly on the meaning in which the word "create" is used.
Men ordinarily use the word with such a meaning that it is correct to
say that Bell created the speaking telephone; it being understood as
a matter of common sense that Bell did not create the metals and other
material parts which he put together to make the telephone.
Used in this sense, primeval man (or more correctly some primeval
men, and probably a very few) created certain weapons, implements and
utensils, that gave the men who used them such mastery over wild beasts
and over men who did not use them, that the steps since taken toward
civilization were made possible.
Our whole civilization can be traced back to those inventions, and can
be shown to proceed from them and be based upon them. _No other basis
that civilization could have proceeded from can even be imagined; for
the actual progress of events was the outcome of the actual nature of
man, and the actual nature of his environment._
We seem forced to conclude, therefore, that we owe our civilization
primarily to the invention of certain primeval implements and weapons,
the art of making fire, etc., and therefore to the inventors who made
the inventions. This does not mean that we do not owe it to other
things besides inventions, and to other men besides inventors; for it
is obvious that we owe it to all the facts of our history, and to such
of our ancestors as did anything to advance it. We owe it in part, for
instance, to the men who framed the laws that made living in villages
and cities possible, to the men who executed the laws, and to all the
men and women who observed the laws and gave examples of righteous
living. For it is obvious that, no matter what inventions were made,
the march of civilization could not have even started, unless there had
been a sufficient number of good and intelligent men and women to keep
the human procession in good order from the first.
It may be pointed out here that, although every human being has much
of evil in his nature, yet even the most depraved person desires
other people to be good. Even thieves see the advantage to themselves
resulting from the fact that most men do not steal; murderers have no
inclination toward being themselves murdered, and human beings as a
class see the benefits of morality and good living throughout society
as a whole. For this reason, and for the still more important reason
that most individuals are not very different in their characteristics
and abilities from the average of all individuals, the tendency of
society is to reduce men to a common level; so that we see only a
small fraction who are extremely good or extremely bad, extremely
brilliant or extremely stupid, extremely large or extremely small, etc.
Similarly, there is only a small fraction of the people who have done
much good individually or much harm, or who have exercised individually
any noticeable influence of any kind.
We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that there were only a few men
in primeval days who performed any acts that entitle them to individual
recognition; and as the only records that have come down to us indicate
that the most important acts were the inventing of certain implements,
we seem forced to conclude that most of the recognition accorded to
individuals of primeval days may be limited to a very small number, and
they inventors.
Who they were, and where and when they lived, is not known and probably
never will be. For countless centuries their names and personalities
have been forgotten as wholly as those of many beasts. But maybe other
achievements like those that have exposed the history of certain
Oriental kings and wise men to our knowledge, will some day tell us who
were the inventors who started the march of human progress, and pointed
out the road that it should follow.
Yet, if we infer the probable conditions of the remote past from the
conditions of the present and recent past, we shall have to conclude
that, while the names and deeds of prehistoric rulers may some day
become known to us, and even the names of authors, poets and song
singers, the names of the original inventors will be forever hid. For
inventors have ever been depreciated in their day; even at the present
time, despite the known facts as to what inventions and inventors
have done for every one of us, the inventor as an inventor is lightly
regarded, and so are his inventions. So are his inventions until they
have ceased to be regarded as inventions, and have been accepted as
constituent parts of the machine of civilization. By that time the
inventor has often been forgotten.
The Age of Iron succeeded the Age of Bronze in the countries from which
we have inherited our civilization; but in Africa bronze does not seem
to have been discovered until after iron was. Iron being an element
like copper, and not an alloy of two metals like bronze, it seems
probable that its discovery, like that of copper, followed the act of
heating stones with fire. The coming of iron seems due therefore to
discovery rather than to invention; but yet the mere discovery that a
very hard substance had been accidentally produced would of itself have
brought forth no fruit. One is almost forced to infer from probability
that the fact must have become known to many men, but only as a plain
and uninteresting fact. Finally, some man realized that that hard
substance was superior to bronze for making weapons, and then set to
work to ascertain exactly what kinds of stone it could be gotten from,
and exactly what process gave the best results.
To us who have been carefully taught the facts known at the present
day, and whose minds have been trained by logic and mathematics to
reason from effect to cause, and to construct frameworks of cause
wherefrom to gain effects, it seems that anyone who noted that the
hard substance which we call iron came from heating certain stones,
would immediately invent a process for making iron in quantities. But
prehistoric man had no knowledge whatever save that coming from his
own observation and the oral teachings of the wise men; mathematics
and logic did not exist; and the only training given him was in those
simple arts of hunting, fishing, field tilling, etc., by which he
earned his livelihood. For a mind so untrained and ignorant to leap
from the simple noting of the accidental production of the metal to
a realization of its value, then to a correct inference as to the
possibility of producing it at will, then to a correct inference as
to the method of producing it, and then to devising the method and
actually producing iron at will, suggests a reasoning intelligence of
an order exceedingly high.
Nevertheless, the art of making iron may have originated not so much
from effort as from inspiration; the process may have been less one of
reasoning than one of imagination, less one of construction than one of
invention. In fact, when we realize that imagination is almost wholly
a pure gift (like beauty, or artistic genius or a singing voice) while
the reasoning and constructive faculties require long education, we may
reasonably conclude that the production of iron and of all the metals
and processes in prehistoric times, was probably attributable mainly to
invention.
The crowning invention of prehistoric man was that of writing; for
it lifted him out of his dependence on oral teachings, with their
liability to error and forgetfulness, into a condition in which the
facts and experiences of life, and the reasons for failure or success,
could be put into permanent form, and supply sure bases from which to
start on any line of progress in the future.
The production of the art of writing seems to have been a pure
invention, and it has always been so regarded. Nothing resembling
writing is to be found in nature; _nowhere do we see in nature any
effort to preserve any records of any kind_. How man, or a man, was led
to invent writing we can only imagine, for we cannot ascertain. When
we realize, however, how entirely novel an undertaking the production
of writing was, and that there is no process of mere reasoning by
which a man could arrive at a decision to produce it, we seem forced
to conclude that it must have been caused by one of those inexplicable
conceptions that imagination puts into the mind, and that constitute an
inspiration, coming from the Great Outside and its ruler, the Almighty.
In fact, if one ponders the history and teachings of the Christian
religion (in truth of all religions), and notes that the revelations
on which they are believed to have been founded seem to have come
unbidden to certain men as inspirations from On High, he must realize
how similar are the conceptions that come to inventors in a field less
spiritual, but yet actual. For in the case of each basic invention, an
idea seems to have come unbidden to the mind, and grown and developed
there.
The first writing was what we call picture writing, in which
representations in outline of well-known objects were scratched with
a hard point on some softer substance. This form of writing probably
began in the Old Stone Age. It continued for different lengths of
time among different peoples, as have all other characteristics of
any stage of civilization; and it is practiced in some degree by some
peoples even now. In fact, one might with reasonableness declare that
many of the illustrations used in books and magazines and papers, many
of the paintings and drawings that adorn our walls, and many of the
moving pictures in our places of amusement convey messages by means of
pictures, and are therefore forms of picture writing.
As the intelligence of man increased, and his consequent need for
better means of expressing himself in writing increased, the idea
occurred to someone to use conventional drawings to represent vocal
sounds, instead of pictures of visible objects. The first writing of
this kind, called phonetic writing, used characters that represented
spoken words, and therefore required many characters and necessitated
long and tedious study to master it. It was gradually replaced among
most peoples by an improved phonetic system, in which each character
represented a syllable instead of a word; though the Chinese have
never wholly abandoned it. The syllabic system needed, of course,
fewer characters, and was much more easily learned, much more flexible
and generally satisfactory. The syllabic system was finally replaced
among the more progressive peoples by the alphabetical system, in
which each character represents a separate vocal sound. As the number
of separate vocal sounds is few, only a few characters are needed. In
most alphabets, the number of characters varies between twenty-two and
thirty-six.
We of the present day plume ourselves greatly on our achievements in
invention, and point to the tens of thousands of scientific appliances,
books and works of art with which we have enriched our civilization. To
most of us, prehistoric man was an uncouth creature, living in caves
and uncleanly huts, and so far removed from us that in our hearts we
class him as little higher than the beasts. Yet to prehistoric man we
owe all that we are and all that we have. The gift of life itself came
to us through him; and so did not only our physical faculties, but our
mental, moral and spiritual faculties as well. It was prehistoric man
who invented the appliances without which the wild beasts would not
have been overcome, and the man, wilder than himself, been kept at bay;
by means of which the soil was tilled, and boats were made to move
upon the water, and villages and towns were built. It was prehistoric
man who invented spoken language and the arts of drawing, painting,
architecture, weaving and writing. It was prehistoric man who started
the race on its forward march, and pointed it in the direction in
which it has ever since advanced. It was prehistoric man who made the
inventions on which all succeeding inventions have been based. The
prehistoric inventor exercised an influence on progress greater than
that of any other man.
CHAPTER II
INVENTION IN THE ORIENT
The first countries to pass into the stage of recorded history were
Egypt and Babylonia. Excavations made near the sites of their ancient
cities have brought to light many inscriptions which, being deciphered
and translated, give us clear knowledge of the conditions under which
they lived, and therefore of the degree of the civilization that they
had attained.
As we note the progress that the inscriptions show us to have been
made beyond the stage reached by prehistoric man, it becomes clear to
us that much--if not most--of that progress could not have been made
without the aid of writing. One cannot conceive of the invention and
development of Astronomy, for instance, without some means of recording
observations that had been made.
In developing the art of writing itself, much progress was effected
in both countries, and many improvements were made in the art itself
that must have been due to that lower order of invention which consists
in improving on things already existing. In addition, invention was
employed in devising and arranging means for preserving the writings in
an enduring form. In Babylonia, this was done by making the writing on
soft tablets of clay about an inch in thickness, that were afterwards
baked to hardness. In the case of records of unusual importance, the
precaution was sometimes taken of covering the baked inscription with
a thin layer of clay, making a duplicate inscription on this layer,
and then baking it also. If afterwards, from any cause, the outside
inscription was defaced, it could be removed and the inside inscription
exposed to view.
In Egypt, the writing was done on sheets of papyrus, made from a reed
that grew in the marshes. To devise and make both the baked clay
tablets and the papyrus, it is clear that invention had to be employed;
for nothing exactly like them existed in nature. Thus the invention
of the art of writing was supplemented by the invention of the art of
preserving the records that writing made. The act of writing would have
been useful, even if no means had been invented for preserving the
things written; even if the things written had perished in a day. But
the importance of the invention of writing was increased ten thousand
fold by the invention of the means for preserving the things written;
because without that means it would have been impossible by any process
of continual copying of tablets to keep at hand for reference that
library of records of the past on which all progress has been based,
and from which every act of progress has started, since some inventor
of Babylonia invented baked clay tablets and some inventor of Egypt
invented papyrus.
It may be objected that there is no reason for assuming that any one
man invented either; that each invention may have been the joint work
of two men, or of several men. This of course, is true; but it does not
minimize the importance of either invention, or the credit due to the
inventors. It simply divides the credit of each invention among several
men, instead of giving it all to one. It is a notable fact, however,
that, although some inventions have been made by the joint work of two
men, and although some books have been written, and some music has been
composed by two men working in cooperation, yet such instances have
been rare.
Many men combine to do constructive work of many kinds, and millions
combine to work and fight together in armies; and it is an interesting
fact that the working together of many men has been made possible by
inventions, such as writing and printing. Yet there is hardly any other
kind of work that is so wholly a "one man job" as inventing. The fact
that only one man, as a rule, makes a certain invention, or writes a
certain book, or composes a certain musical piece, or does any other
inventional work, seems to spring naturally from the original fact that
an invention begins with a picture made by imagination on a mind. Now a
picture so made is an individual picture in an individual mind. If the
picture is allowed to fade, or if from any cause the mind that received
it does not form it into a definite entity, no invention is made. If,
on the contrary, the mind develops the dim picture into a definite
entity of some kind, that mind alone has made that invention; even if
other minds improve it later by super-posing other inventions on it.
It is true that sometimes a man who receives from his imagination
a mental picture of some possible invention will communicate it to
another man, and that other man will contribute some constructive work,
and make the dim picture into a reality; so that the complete invention
resulting will be the joint product of two men. It seems to be a fact,
however, that these dim pictures have rarely been disclosed while in
the formless period, and that almost every invention of which we know
the history, was made by one man only.
It need hardly be interjected here that we are discussing inventions
only, and not the acts of making inventions practicable in the sense
of making them useful or commercially successful. At the present day,
there are few inventions indeed, which even after having been completed
as inventions, need no modification at the hands of the engineer and
the manufacturer, before they are suitable to be put to practical use.
* * * * *
That the Babylonians realized the importance of their invention is
proved by the fact that their baked tablets were carefully preserved,
and that in some cities large libraries were built in which they were
kept, as books are kept in our libraries at the present day. When the
expedition of the University of Pennsylvania made its excavations
near the site of the ancient city of Nippur, in the southern part of
Babylonia near the city of Babylon, a library was discovered that
contained more than thirty thousand tablets.
[Illustration: Early Babylonian Signs, Showing Their Pictorial Origin]
The writing of the Babylonians, while phonetic, was a development of
picture writing, each character expressing a syllable, and was made of
wedge-shaped characters. From the shape of the characters the adjective
_cuneiform_ has been applied to the writing, the word coming from the
Latin word, _cuneus_, a wedge. Syllabic writing was in use for probably
three thousand years among the peoples of western Asia.
The Babylonians utilized their ingenuity and inventiveness in divers
ways, and accomplished many things that help to form the basis of
our civilization, without which we cannot imagine it to exist. Their
creations were of a highly practical and useful kind, and illustrate
the proverb that "necessity is the mother of invention." From the fact
that their ships sailed the waters of the Persian Gulf, and had need
of means to locate their positions and determine their courses from
port to port, and from the fact easily noted by their navigators that
the heavenly bodies held positions in the firmament depending on their
direction from an observer, and on the month and season and the time of
day, the study of the heavens was undertaken; with the result that the
science of astronomy was conceived and brought into existence.
It may here be asked if this achievement can properly be called an
invention. One must hesitate a little before answering this question
either negatively or positively; because such an achievement is not
usually called an invention, and yet it cannot truthfully be denied
that there is nothing in Nature like the science of astronomy, and
that therefore it must have been created by man. It cannot reasonably
be denied, also, that after the science had at last been formulated,
it was as clearly a distinct entity as a bow and arrow or a telephone.
Furthermore, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that, before
any of the principles of astronomy were laid down, before anyone even
attempted to lay them down, before anyone even attempted to ascertain
the laws that seemed to govern the movements of the heavenly bodies,
the idea must have occurred to someone that those heavenly bodies were
all moving in obedience to some law; and a more or less confused and
yet real image must have been made upon his mind of a great celestial
machine. He must actually have imagined such a machine. This first act
would be quite like that of the inventor of a mechanical device. The
next act would be to observe and record all the phenomena observable
in connection with the movements of the celestial bodies, then to
analyze and classify them. This series of acts would not, of course, be
inventive or even constructive. They would rather be like those studies
of any art, without which no man could be an inventor in that art.
The analysis having been completed, the positions of the heavenly
bodies at various times having been ascertained and tabulated, the
next step would seem to be to construct a supposititious machine of
which each part would represent a heavenly body, and in which those
various parts would move according to laws induced tentatively from
the actual motions of certain heavenly bodies. If it were afterwards
found that all positions of each part, predicted in advance by applying
the laws tentatively induced, corresponded to the actual positions
of the heavenly body that it represented, then the supposititious
machine could be truthfully declared to be a correct imitation of the
great celestial machine. That is, the machine could be declared to be
successful.
The science of astronomy is, in effect, such a machine. Its parts are
representations of the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, that move
according to laws that are illustrated in the diagrams, and expressed
precisely in the formulas.
The first act of the originator of the science of astronomy being one
of the imagination in conceiving a picture of a celestial machine, and
being like that of the inventor in conceiving a picture of an earthly
machine; and his second act being also like that of the inventor in
developing the picture, a justification for speaking of the "invention"
of the science of astronomy may perhaps be reasonably claimed.
(We must bear in mind, of course, that no invention is complete until
the third act has been performed, and the thing invented has been
actually produced.)
To speak of invention in connection with bringing forth novel creations
is far from new, for the phrases "construct a theory," "invent a
science," "invent a religion," etc., are in almost daily use; and it
may seem unnecessary to some persons, therefore, to discuss it at
such length. But most people seem to regard such phrases as merely
figurative; while the author wishes to make it plain that they are not
figurative but exact.
As this modest treatise does not pretend to be a learned one, and as
the author is not a professional scholar, no further attempt will
be made to claim the production of the science of astronomy as an
invention. To pursue the subject further would be merely to enter a
discussion as to the meaning, both original and derived, of the word
invention. The author, however, cannot escape the conclusion that,
no matter what may be the literally correct meaning of the word, the
mental acts performed by the originators of the science of astronomy
were like the mental acts performed by the inventors of mechanical
appliances, and exerted a similar influence on history. That is, he
believes that the men who brought into being the science of astronomy
and the men who brought into being the bow and arrow, first saw
pictures on the mental retina of some things actual yet vague and
formless, and then constructed entities from them. He believes also
that the creation of the bow and arrow, and the creation of the
science of astronomy constituted actual and similar stepping-stones on
which the race rose toward a higher civilization.
In default of any definition of the word invention, which precludes
its application to the origination of a science, theory, religion or
formulated school of thought, the author begs permission so to use it,
in indicating the influence on history of the novel creations which,
according to this meaning of the word, have been inventions.
The influence on history of the invention of the science of astronomy
has been so great that we cannot estimate its greatness. On it the
whole science of navigation rests. Without it, the science and the art
of navigation could not exist, no ships could cross the ocean from one
port to another, except by accident, and the lands that are separated
by the ocean would still rest in complete ignorance of each other.
This world would not be a world, but only a widely separated number of
barbarian countries; most of them as ignorant of even the existence of
the others as in the days before Columbus.
Following the invention of astronomy, or as it was first called,
Astrology, the imaginative and practically constructive intellects
of the Babylonians naturally led them to invent the sun-dial for
indicating the time during the day, and the water-clock for indicating
it during the night.
Another invention, doubtless brought into being by the study of
the movements of the heavenly bodies, was the duodecimal system of
notation, of which the base was twelve. In accordance with this
system, the Babylonians divided the Zodiac into twelve equal parts or
"signs"; divided the year into nearly equal months, that corresponded
approximately to the length of a lunar month; divided a day and a night
into twelve equal parts or hours; divided an hour in sixty (12 x 5)
equal parts or minutes, and divided a minute into sixty (12 x 5) equal
parts or seconds.
The duodecimal system of notation has been supplanted for many purposes
by the more convenient decimal system, the invention of which is
attributed by some to the Arabs; but the duodecimal divisions of time
are still with us, and the duodecimal divisions of the circle are still
used in most countries.
The duodecimal system of notation seems to have been the earliest
system of notation invented; and it was an invention so important that
we cannot imagine civilization without it and the decimal system,
possibly its offspring. The influence of these two inventions on
history has been so great that the mind is incapable of realizing its
greatness, even approximately.
Who were the inventors, we do not know. It is almost certain that none
of our generation ever will know, and it is far from probable that any
one of any generation will ever know. If any knowledge on this subject
is ever given to the world, it will be knowledge of names only--only
names. Yet some human beings, forgotten now and probably obscure even
in their lifetimes, invented those systems, and contributed more to the
real progress of the race than many of the great statesmen and warriors
of history.
The Babylonians invented measures of length, capacity and weight, also;
and it is from those measures that all the later measures have been
directly or indirectly derived. To have invented systems by which time,
angle, distance, space, weight and volume were lifted out of the realm
of the vague and formless into the realm of the definite and actual,
was an achievement that almost suggests that noted in the first chapter
of Genesis, in the words, "And God said 'Let there be light,' and there
was light"; for what a clearing up of mental darkness followed, when
the science of measurement turned its rays on the mysteries that beset
the path of early man!
The Egyptians seem to have been inventors, though hardly to the same
degree as were the Babylonians. The Egyptians studied the heavens and
employed a science of astronomy; and it is possible that they, rather
than the Babylonians, should be credited with its invention. But it is
not the intention of this book to decide points in dispute in history,
or even to discuss them. Its intention is merely to study the influence
that inventions and inventors had. Whether the name of an inventor was
John Smith or Archimedes, whether he lived in the year 1000 or 1100,
or which one of two rival claimants should be credited with the honor
of any invention, is often an interesting question; but it is not one
that is especially important to us, unless it casts light on the main
suggestion of our inquiry. The only reason for mentioning names and
dates and countries in this book is to show the sequence of inventions
as correctly as practicable. In order to show the influence of
invention on history it seems best to give the treatment of the subject
an historical character.
Possibly the most important invention of the Egyptians was papyrus,
which was the precursor of the paper of today. The clay tablets of
the Babylonians were clearly much less adapted to the making of many
records than was papyrus. One cannot readily imagine an edition of
300,000 newspapers like the _New York Times_, made out of clay tablets
an inch in thickness, and sold on the streets by newsboys. Clearly the
invention of papyrus was one so important that we cannot declare any
invention as more important, except on the basis that (other factors
being equal) the earlier an invention was the more important it was.
To assume such a basis would, of course, be eminently reasonable;
because the earlier invention must have supplied the basis in part for
the making of the later. The invention of writing, for instance, was
more important than the invention of papyrus.
[Illustration: Villa of an Egyptian Noble]
A curious invention of the Egyptians was the art of embalming the
bodies of the dead, an art still practiced in civilized countries. It
was prompted by their belief that the preservation of the body was
necessary, in order to secure the welfare of the soul in the future
life. This belief resulted further in building sepulchres of elaborate
design, filling them with multitudes of objects of many kinds,
decorating the walls with paintings, sculptures and inscriptions,
and placing important manuscripts in the coffins with the mummies or
embalmed bodies. The sepulchres of the kings were, of course, the
largest and most elaborate of all; and of these sepulchres the grandest
were the pyramids. By reason of the great care and labor lavished on
tombs and sepulchres and pyramids, and by reason also of the dryness of
the air in Egypt, and the consequent durability of works of stone, it
has been from the tombs that many of the clearest items of information
have come to us about old Egyptian times.
The Egyptians excelled in architecture, and the greatest of their
buildings were the pyramids. As to whether or not there was much
invention devoted to those works, it is virtually impossible now
to know. The probability seems to be that they could not have been
produced without the promptings of the inventor, but that the progress
was a slow and gradual march. It seems that there was a long series
of many small inventions that made short steps, and not a few basic
inventions that proceeded by great leaps.
The Egyptians seem to have been the inventors of arithmetic and
geometry. What men in particular should most be credited with
inventing them, we do not know; but that some men were the original
inventors the probabilities seem to intimate. For these sciences were
creations just as actual as the steam engine, and could hardly have
been produced save by similar procedures.
[Illustration: The Pyramids of Gizeh]
The suggestion may here be made that whatever we do is the result (or
ought to be) of a decision to do it, that follows a mental process
not very different from that invented by the German General Staff for
solving military problems. By this process one writes down--
1. The mission--the thing which it is desired to accomplish.
2. The difficulties in the way of accomplishing it.
3. The facilities available for accomplishing it.
4. The decision--that is, how to employ the facilities to overcome the
difficulties and accomplish the mission.
In solving a military problem (or in solving many of the problems of
daily life) it is often a matter of great difficulty to arrive at a
clear understanding of what the mission actually is, what one really
wishes to accomplish. In the majority of ordinary cases, however, the
mission stands out as a clear picture in the mind. Such a case would
be one in which an enemy were making a direct attack; for the mission
would be simply to repel it. Another case would be one in which the
mission was stated by the terms of a problem itself; for instance, to
build a steam engine to develop 1000 horse power. In the case of the
inventor, the mission seems to be sent to him as a mental picture; he
suddenly sees a dim picture in his mind of something that he must make.
Perhaps, many centuries ago, some man who had been laying out plots of
ground in Egypt, of different shapes and sizes, and making computations
for each one, suddenly saw a phantom picture in which all the lines and
figures appeared grouped in a few classes, and arranged in conformity
to a few fixed rules. The mission was given to him free, but it
devolved on him to formulate the rules. As soon as he had formulated
and proved the rules, the science of Geometry existed.
It is interesting to note that the conception of the idea required
no labor on the part of the conceiver. He was virtually a passive
receiver. His labor came afterwards, when he had to do the constructive
work of "giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."
The Egyptians seem to have learned the use of many drugs, though they
can hardly be said to have invented a system or a science of medicine.
They did, however, invent a system of characters for indicating the
weights of drugs. Those characters are used by apothecaries still.
The first means of cure were incantations that evidently influenced the
mind. It is interesting to note that modern systems tend to decrease
the use of drugs and increase that of mental suggestion.
Both the Babylonians and the Egyptians held religious beliefs; but it
is doubtful if the religious beliefs of either were so definite and
formulated that they could be correctly called religions, according to
our ideas of what constitutes a religion. An interesting fact is the
wide difference between the beliefs of the two peoples, in view of the
similarity of many of the other features of their civilizations. The
beliefs of neither can be called highly spiritual; but of the two, the
Egyptian seems to have been the more so. The Egyptians believed that
the souls of those who had lived good lives would be rewarded; while
the Babylonian belief did not include even a judgment of the dead.
One of the most important inventions made in Babylonia was that of a
code of laws. It is usually ascribed to a king named Hammurabi; but
whether he was the real inventor or not, we have no means of knowing.
We do know, however, that the first code of laws of which there is any
record was invented in his reign, and that it was the prototype of all
that have followed since.
The influence on history of the invention and carrying into effect of
a formulated code of laws, we cannot exactly gauge; but we may assert
with confidence that modern civilization would not have been possible
without codes of laws, and that the first code must have been more
important than any code that followed, because it led the way.
Both the Babylonians and the Egyptians seem to have made most of
their inventions in the period of their youth, and to have become
conservative as they grew older. The Babylonians were a great people
until about the year 1250 B. C., when a subject city, Assur, in the
north, threw off its allegiance and formed an independent state,
Assyria. The decline of Babylonia continued until the fall of Assyria
and the destruction of Nineveh, its capital, about the year 606 B. C.,
when the new Babylonian, or Chaldean Empire, came into existence. It
enjoyed a period of splendid but brief prosperity until it was captured
by Cyrus, king of Persia, in the year 538 B. C.
Egypt's career continued until a later day; but it was never glorious
in statesmanship, war or invention, after her youth had passed.
A nation possibly as old as the Babylonian or Egyptian was the Chinese;
but of their history, less is known. It is well established, however,
that they possessed a system of picture writing in which each word was
represented by a symbol. The system was much more cumbrous, of course,
than the syllabic or alphabetical; but its invention was a performance,
nevertheless, of the utmost brilliancy and importance, viewed from the
light of what the world was then. There is little doubt also that the
Chinese were the original inventors of the magnetic compass and of
printing from blocks, two of those essential inventions, without which
civilization could not have been brought about. Another of China's
inventions was gunpowder; though it is not clear that the Chinese ever
used it to propel projectiles out of guns.
Achievements equally great, and maybe greater, were the creations of
religions--Confucianism and Taoism, invented in China, and Buddhism,
invented in India. These religions may seem to us very crude and
commonplace and earthy; but we should not shut our eyes to the fact
that they have probably influenced a greater number of human beings
toward right living than any other three religions that we know of.
Like Babylonia and Egypt, China became conservative as she grew older.
At the present day, her name stands almost as the symbol of everything
non-progressive and non-inventive.
Assyria was able to capture Babylon about the year 1250 B. C., and to
maintain the position of the dominant power in western Asia for about
600 years. A progressive and ambitious people, they accomplished an
original and important step in the art of government by organizing
conquered peoples into provinces under governors appointed by the
king. It does not seem to be a great straining of the word to declare
that this achievement was so novel, so concrete and so useful as to
possess the essential features of an invention. For if we realize that
during all the times that had gone by, conquered peoples had remained
simply conquered peoples, paying tribute but not forming parts of the
conquering state, we can see that the idea of actually incorporating
them into the state, thereby increasing the population of the state
by the number of people incorporated, and making the state stronger
in that proportion, we can hardly fail to realize that the conception
of doing this was of the highest order of brilliancy. To work out
afterwards the details of developing the conception in such a way as
to render possible the production of an actual and workable machine
of government was a constructive act. When the machine was actually
produced a new thing had been created. In other words, the institution
of this new scheme in government seems to have followed the same three
stages as the invention of a mechanical device; that is, conception,
development and production.
_The likeness between this process and that of conception, gestation
and birth is obvious._
The Assyrians were evidently a very practical and constructive people,
somewhat such people as the Romans later were. They devoted themselves
to the practical side of life, and to this end they developed the
governmental and the military arts. They were great warriors. The
period of their greatest greatness was in the seventh and eighth
centuries B. C., when the conquerors Sargon II and Sennacherib were
kings. The splendor of the empire afterwards was conspicuous but not
long lived; for after unifying the great nations of the Orient under
Assyrian rule, and carrying on wars marked with the utmost of cruelty
and oppression, they finally entered on a rapid decline in morals,
and consequently in national prosperity and strength. The end came in
606 B. C., when a combined force of Medes and Babylonians captured
and sacked the hated Nineveh, the capital. The intensity of the
hatred against the Assyrians may be gauged by the completion of the
destruction visited on Nineveh. When Xenophon saw its ruins only two
centuries afterwards, he could not even ascertain what city those ruins
marked.
The Assyrians have left us clearer records of their achievements in
the invention of weapons than has any other ancient nation. It is
impossible to declare with certainty that all the seemingly novel
weapons and armor which the ancient Assyrians possessed and used were
invented by themselves, and not by the Egyptians or the Babylonians;
but the mere facts that the Assyrians were the most military nation of
the three, and that the specimens of those weapons which have come down
to us have been mostly Assyrian, give probability to that supposition.
The Assyrian soldier was finely equipped and armed as far back as the
thirteenth century B. C.; and Assyrian bas-reliefs show that they
actually used war-chariots then, drawn by horses and operated by armed
warriors. The infantry soldiers wore defensive armor consisting of
helmets, corslets made of skin or some woven stuff on which plates of
metal were sewn, and sometimes coats of steel mail; with leggings to
protect the legs. They carried shields, and were armed with lances,
swords, slings and bows and arrows. The Assyrians employed cavalry,
the horsemen wearing mail armor, and carrying shields and swords and
lances. They employed archers also; the archers being sometimes mounted.
The use of war-chariots, with all the mechanical equipment that was
necessary, in order to make them operate effectively, shows a state
of civilization much higher than many people realize. It shows also
that a great deal of inventiveness and constructiveness must have been
employed, and must have been skilfully directed;--for it is a very
long road--a very long road indeed--from the bow and arrow to the
war-chariot. In order to produce the war-chariot, several inventions
must have previously been made. The most important of these was one of
the most important inventions ever made,--the wheel.
Who invented the wheel, and when and where did he invent it?
This is one of the unanswered questions of history. The war-chariot
suddenly appears on the stage, without any preliminary announcement,
and without any knowledge on our part that even the wheel on which it
moved had been invented.
It is true that the records of prehistoric man show us that in
fashioning pottery he used a disc that he revolved on a spindle and
applied to the surface of the urn or vase; and it is also true that a
revolving disc is a kind of wheel. But a disc revolving on a stationary
spindle is in its intent and use a very different implement from a
wheel placed on a chariot, and turned by the forward movement of the
chariot itself, for the important purpose of reducing its resistance to
being drawn along the ground.
It is true also that invention was needed to produce the revolving
disc, the forerunner of all the polishing and turning machines on the
earth today. But the wheel was a different invention, probably a later
one, and certainly a more important one. There are things sometimes
seen in nature that look a little like revolving discs; for instance,
swirls of dust or water. In fact, almost anything put in rotation looks
like one, if the rotation is rapid enough; for instance, the sling that
a primeval slinger revolved around his head. But what do we know of in
nature that looks like a wheel, or that is used for a similar purpose?
Nothing. This being the case, the mind may lose itself in speculation
as to what could have led to the conception of such an appliance in the
mind of the original inventor of the wheel.
The suggestion may be hazarded that the invention was preceded by an
accidental recognition of the fact that it was easier to drag something
along the ground, if it rested on round logs, than if it did not so
rest; and by noting also that the logs were passed over and left behind
continually. From this point to the mental conception of a roller that
would not be left behind, but would be secured to the thing dragged
by a round shaft on which it revolved, there was probably a single
mental jump. Someone saw such a contrivance with his mental eye. It
looked dim and unreal--but he saw it. To make the picture clear, and
then to develop the thing pictured, constructiveness was used. In other
words, conception and development accomplished their successive but
cooperating tasks. The invention was complete when a wheel was actually
produced.
To realize the importance of the wheel, we have but to ask ourselves
(or our neighbors) how history could possibly have been even
approximately what it has been if the wheel had not been invented.
Another important invention probably made by the Assyrians was the
catapult; another one, somewhat similar, was the balista. The catapult
was used for hurling stones, balls, etc.; the balista for shooting
arrows with greater force than an archer could exert. Another was the
battering ram for making breaches in the walls of fortresses.
[Illustration: Assyrians Flaying Prisoners Alive. (From a bas-relief.)]
The Assyrians used these inventions in their wars against the
contiguous nations of the East, and with their aid achieved the
mastery, and unified the Orient. That the Assyrian rule was harsh
and cruel should not be denied; but, on the principle that any kind
of government is better than no government, it cannot reasonably be
supposed that the central and efficient administration of Assyria was
not better than the condition of continual petty wars and quarrels that
had existed among the numerous tribes and nations, with their enormous
possibilities for suffering of all kinds.
It may be pointed out here that the cruelties and injustices committed
by any powerful government against great numbers of persons attract
immeasurably more notice and condemnation by historians and others
than do the numberless atrocities of all kinds that lie hidden in the
darkness of anarchy, or the confusion of petty wars. In the endeavor to
preserve order over widely separated and barbarous peoples, when means
of transportation and communication were inadequate, stern measures
seem always to have been required. That they have often been too stern,
and that great cruelty has often been exercised, the wail of the ages
testifies. But human nature is very imperfect; and no really good
government, no government free from the faults of man, has ever been
established. Yet every government has been better than anarchy.
The Assyrians, despite their cruel treatment of their conquered
peoples, did a direct service to mankind and gave a powerful stimulus
to the march of progress. For the great empire which they established,
and the great cities which grew up, and the system of provinces which
they instituted, formed a pattern for similar work by later nations;
while the civilization which they spread throughout the more backward
countries under their rule, especially in Greece, started the later
culture which Greece developed, and which is the basis of all that is
most beautiful in the civilization of today.
The influence of the weapons which the Assyrians invented was toward
this end.
Between Egypt on the west and Babylonia and Assyria on the east lay
Syria; a territory not very large, of which the part that played the
most prominent part in history bordered the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. Two important peoples dwelt in Syria, the Hebrews
and the Phoenicians. Both belonged to the Semitic race, and neither was
distinctly warlike; though the Hebrews during a brief period achieved
considerable military strength and skill, under their great king David.
The main gift of the Hebrews to the world was the Jewish religion, a
more spiritual religion than any that had preceded it, and based on a
conception of one God, a holy God. The ideas held of immortality and of
judgment after death for the deeds done in this life were not entirely
new, but the conception of a holy and beneficent Deity was new; and
it was so inspiring and stimulating a conception that it lifted the
Jews at once to a moral and spiritual plane higher than any people had
ever lived on before. It constituted a step also directly toward the
Christian religion--which also was born in Syria; in Palestine.
That the conception and establishment of the Jewish religion was an
invention may not be admitted by some; but the author respectfully asks
attention to the sense in which he uses the word invention in this
book, and points out that they constituted an invention in that sense.
That it was a beneficent invention, and that it helped the human race
spiritually in a way analogous to that in which the invention of
many mechanical devices helped it materially, does not seem hard to
realize. For in both cases the race was transported away from savagery
and toward high civilization; and in both cases there was first a
conception of something desirable, then a constructive effort to
develop it, and finally its production.
The Phoenicians lived just north of the Jews, and possessed a territory
smaller than that of any other people who ever exercised an equal
influence on history; for it embraced merely a little strip of land
hardly longer than a hundred and twenty miles from north to south, or
wider on the average than twelve miles from east to west. It bordered
on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and was shut off by the
mountains of Lebanon from Syria, that lay due east.
The Phoenicians were a people of extraordinary enterprise and
initiative. Inventors are men of extraordinary enterprise and
initiative. How much the Phoenicians are to be credited with the
invention of sailing vessels, we have no means of knowing; but we
do know that (with the possible exception of the Egyptians) the
Phoenicians were more identified with early navigation by sailing
vessels and by vessels pulled by oars than any other people. It
is even known that Phoenician vessels were navigating the Eastern
Mediterranean, both under sails and under oars, as long ago as 1500 B.
C. So, while we should not be justified in asserting positively that
the Phoenicians were the inventors and developers of sailing vessels
and of vessels pulled by banks of oars and steered by rudders, we may
declare with ample reason that probably they were.
For the purposes of this book, however, the identity of the inventors
is not important. What is important is the fact that the invention
of those vessels had immediate fruit in a commerce by which the
products of eastern civilization were taken westward to Greece and
other countries, while tin and other raw material were brought east
from Spain and even Britain; and that it had later fruit in gradually
building up a western civilization. It had other fruit as well, in
demonstrating the possibilities and the value of ocean commerce, and
forming the basis of the world-wide navigation of today.
Few inventions have had a greater influence on history than that of the
sailing ship. To some of us it may seem that no invention was involved;
that to use sails was an obvious thing to think of and accomplish. But
if any one of us will close his eyes a moment and imagine an absence
of most of the great scientific and mechanical knowledge of today, and
imagine also the absence of nearly all the present acquaintance with
the laws of weather, flotation, resistance to propulsion, metacentric
height, etc., he may realize what a feat was the invention of the
sailing ship and even of the ship pulled with oars and steered with a
rudder. It is true that we have no reason to assume that either vessel
was conceived by one leap of the imagination and developed by one act,
while we have many reasons to think that each was the result of a
series of short steps; but this does not invalidate the invention of
the ships, or depreciate its influence.
By two other achievements, also, the Phoenicians showed the kinship
between the inventor and the man of enterprise and initiative; the
invention of the Tyrian dyes and of an alphabetical system of writing
that forms the basis of the systems of today. Here again it is
necessary to remind ourselves that possibly the Phoenicians were not
the sole and original inventors of the alphabet, and that they may
have merely improved upon a system invented by, say, the Cretans; and
again it may be helpful to point out that the important fact is not the
personality of the inventors but the birth of the invention, and the
influence of the invention on history. Certain it is, however, that it
was the Phoenicians who brought alphabetical writing to the practical
stage and who not only used it themselves, but carried it in their
ships all over the Mediterranean, where it bore abundant fruit. It bore
fruit especially in Greece.
Phoenicia is an instructive illustration of the fact that a country
(like a man) may make inventions of lasting usefulness to mankind, and
yet not hold a position of power or splendor in the world. Phoenicia
was nearly always a vassal, paying tribute to one great monarchy or
another.
In striking contrast with Phoenicia was the empire of Persia, which,
though it gave to the world of that day the best government it had
ever known, contributed nothing in the nature of an actual new
stepping-stone to civilization.
Persia conquered Lydia, which is credited with the important invention
of coinage. The coins first issued by the Lydians were of electrum, an
alloy of gold and silver. King Croesus later issued coins of pure gold
and pure silver.
Directly east of Syria was Phrygia. It was in Phrygia that the flute,
the first real musical instrument, is supposed to have been invented,
in about the sixteenth century B. C.
* * * * *
The brief résumé just given of the inventions made in prehistoric
times, and also in historic times in China, Egypt and western Asia,
shows that before Greece had attained any civilization whatever the
most important inventions for the betterment of mankind had been
already made. These inventions were not only mechanical appliances
and such arts as spinning, weaving, pottery making, etc., that were
intended for safety and material benefit generally; for they included
systems of government and codes of laws and even religions that
aimed to elevate man, and that did elevate him mentally, morally and
spiritually.
At the present day, when inventions follow each other with such
rapidity that even students and experts cannot keep themselves informed
about them, except in certain specialties, it is natural for us to feel
that no inventing of any consequence was ever done before. In fact, the
present age is called "The Age of Invention." Yet all the inventions
of the last century added together have not had so great influence on
mankind as the invention of writing, or of the bow and arrow, or the
wheel--or almost any of the inventions we have noted. Not only are they
not so important,--they were not so novel, they did not constitute
steps so long, they did not mark such epochs, and probably resulted
from less brilliant pictures on the mind. Can anyone think that the
telephone was as novel or as important as the wheel? Can anyone suppose
that the steam engine, or the electric telegraph, or the powder-gun
took us as long a step upward to civilization as did papyrus? Will
anyone declare that the railroad ushered in as great an epoch as
the sailing ship? Is it probable that the first conception of the
phonograph made quite so startling a picture on the accustomed brain
of the habitual inventor as that of the art of making fire did on the
virgin mentality of the savage?
The last contribution of western Asia to the betterment of the world
was Christianity. It was not made until after Greece had reached the
prime of her civilization and passed beyond it; and some may consider
it a sacrilege to call it an invention. It was an inspiration from On
High. But dare anyone assert that the wonderful conceptions that have
come unbidden to the minds of the great inventors were not, in their
degree, also inspirations from On High? Whence did they come? That they
came there can be no doubt. Whence did they come? Our religion teaches
us that God directs our paths, that He puts good thoughts into our
minds. It also teaches us that He inspired the men who wrote the Bible.
In the ordinary meaning of the word "inspired," Some One inspired every
noble and novel and beneficent achievement that was ever made. Who?
* * * * *
Without insisting tediously on the meaning of the word invention, one
may point out that the word is used continually to mean a mental act by
which something heretofore non-existent is created. The expertest of
all word users, in any language, cried:
"Oh, for a muse that would ascend the highest heaven of invention";
expressing almost exactly what the present author is trying to express,
and indicating invention as the highest effort of the mind.
In this sense, may I reverently claim the Christian Religion as an
invention, one of the greatest inventions ever made?
CHAPTER III
INVENTION IN GREECE
Our brief survey has thus far carried us over the lands of Egypt,
China and western Asia; lands so far removed from us in distance, and
inhabited by people so far removed from us in time and character,
that they seem to belong almost to another world. But we now are
coming to a country which, though its history goes back many centuries
before the Christian era, was a country of Europe and inhabited by
a people who seem near. The Greeks who overran what we now call
Greece, probably about 1500 B. C., took possession of a civilization
exceedingly high, which the inhabitants of the mainland and the Ægean
Islands had received from the East, through the Phoenicians, who
brought it in their ships. This civilization the Ægean islanders,
especially the Cretans, had developed and improved, particularly in
creations of beauty and works of art. The Greeks created a still
higher civilization, and transmitted it to us. The influence of Greek
civilization we see on every hand:--in our language, in our daily life,
and especially in our ideas of art, literature and philosophy.
That a civilization so high and beautiful should have been attained,
could hardly have been brought about without the presence of great
imagination among the Greeks, and the exercise of considerable
invention. The presence of both imagination and invention are evidenced
in every page of the early history of Greece, in the stirring
stories of her heroes, and in the conception and development of her
government. Compared with the stories of ancient Greece, the stories of
the childhood of every other country seem unimaginative and tame. The
stories of early Greece still live and still have the power to charm.
The Iliad and Odyssey are in the first rank of the great poems even
now; and the story of Helen and the siege of Troy is as full of life
and color as any that we know.
[Illustration: Two Cretan Vases]
An interesting legend characteristic of the inventiveness of the
ancient Greeks was that of the large wooden horse in which a hundred
brave warriors concealed themselves, and were drawn within the walls of
Troy by the Trojans themselves, who had been induced to do this by an
ingenious story, invented to deceive them. Whether the legend is true
or not does not affect the fact that invention was needed and employed
to create the legend in the one case, or to cause the incident in the
other case.
The prehistoric age of Greece was filled with myths of so much beauty,
interest and originality, that the Greek mythology is more read, even
now, than any other. It formed also the basis of the later mythology of
the Romans.
It may be noted here that mere imagination is not a quality of very
high importance, unless it be associated with constructiveness. In
fact, imagination is evidenced more by savage and barbarous peoples
than by the civilized; as it is also by children and women than by
men. Imagination by itself, untrained and undirected, while it is
unquestionably an attribute of the mind, is not one of reason, in the
sense that it does not necessarily employ the reasoning faculties. In
fact, the imagination, unless trained and well-directed, may lead us to
the absurdest performances, in defiance of the suggestions of reason.
Using the word imagination in this sense, Shakespeare said--
"The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact."
It is only when imagination has been assisted by reason, it is only
when conception has been followed by construction, that practical
inventions have resulted.
The myths invented by the Greeks in their prehistoric period were
the products of not only imagination but construction. Each myth
was a perfectly connected story, complete in all necessary detail,
admirably put together, and told in charming language. The story of
Jason's Argonautic Expedition in search of the Golden Fleece cannot be
surpassed in any of the elements that make a story good; Penelope is
still the model of conjugal devotion, and Achilles the ideal warrior;
Poseidon, or his Roman successor, Neptune, still rules the waves;
Aphrodite, or Venus, calls up more vividly before our minds than any
other name the vision of feminine beauty even to this day. Hercules
exemplifies muscular strength, and Apollo still typifies that which is
most beautiful in manliness.
The influence of the Grecian myths, "pure inventions" as they were, in
the sense that they were fictitious and not true, has been explained
and demonstrated at great length and with abundant enthusiasm by poets
and scholars for many centuries. They have been generally regarded as
inventions, but nevertheless as quite different from such inventions
as the steam-engine or the printing press. The present author wishes
to point out that the mental processes by which both myths and engines
were created were alike, and that the inventions differed mainly in the
uses to which they were put.
Even the uses to which they were put were similar in the end; for the
use of the myths and of the steam engine was to improve the conditions
of man's existence. There is only one way in which to do this, and that
is by improving the impressions made on his mind. The myths did this by
making beautiful pictures for his mind to gaze at, and by using them to
induce him to follow a certain (good) line of conduct, rather than the
contrary. The steam engine did it by making the conditions of living
more comfortable, by rendering transportation more safe and rapid, and
by rendering possible the procuring of many of the pleasant things of
life from distant places.
The invention of a myth may be said to be the invention of an
immaterial thing; the invention of a steam engine to be of a material
thing. These two lines of effort, invention has followed since long
before the dawn of history. Of the two, the invention of myths and
stories probably succeeded the other.
Probably also it has been the more important in affecting our actual
degree of happiness; affecting it beneficently in the main. For, while
some myths and stories have filled men with dread and horror, a very
large majority have had the opposite effect; and while many mechanical
inventions have contributed to our material ease and comfort, it
is not clear that they have much increased our actual happiness.
Men accommodate themselves easily to changes in their material
surroundings; what is a luxury today will be a necessity tomorrow; and
very many of the material inventions have tended to artificial and
unhealthful modes of living, with consequent physical deterioration and
its accompanying loss of happiness.
As to influence on history, however, the influence of the material
inventions has probably been the greater. Immaterial inventions might
have been made in enormous numbers without of themselves affecting
history greatly; but the material inventions have brought about most of
the events that history describes; and without one material invention,
that of writing, history could not exist at all. History is rather a
narrative of men's deeds than of their thoughts; and their deeds have
been directed largely by the implements which they had to do deeds with.
We must realize, of course, that the Greeks were much indebted to the
Ægeans; for discoveries about the shores and islands of the Ægean
Sea show that long before the advent of the Greeks they used tools
and weapons of rough and then of polished stone, and later of copper
and tin and bronze; that they lived on farms and in villages and
cities, and were governed by monarchs who dwelt in palaces adorned
with paintings and fine carvings, and filled with court gentlemen
and ladies who wore jewelry and fine clothing. Exquisite pottery was
used, decorated with taste and skill; ivory was carved and gems were
engraved, and articles were made of silver and bronze and gold.
As early as the sixth century B. C., the Greeks made things more
beautiful than had ever been made before. One almost feels like saying
that the Greeks invented beauty. Such a declaration would be absurd
of course: but it seems to be a fact that the Greeks had a conception
of beauty that was wholly original with them, and that was not only
finer than that which any other people had ever had before, but finer
than any other people have had since. And not only did they have the
conception, they had the ability to embody the conception in material
forms that possessed a beauty higher than had ever been produced
before, and higher (at least on the average) than have ever been
produced in any other country since.
Looked at in this way, the production of a new and beautiful statue,
painting or temple, seems to be an act of invention much like the
formulation of a myth or the writing of a poem. In this sense, the
Greeks were inventors, inventors of works of beauty that have existed
as concrete material creations for centuries, and have exercised an
enduring influence on the minds of men.
The influence of paintings, statues and temples is not so clear as
that of material inventions, but more clear than that of myths and
poems. They may be said to form a class midway between inventions of
material appliances and inventions of immaterial thoughts and fancies.
A beautiful painting or statue is a material object in the same sense
as that in which a steam engine is; but its office is to stimulate the
mind, as a poem does.
The first inventor of mechanical appliances, mentioned by name as
such, was Dædalus of Athens. He was probably a mythical person. He was
reputed to be the son or the grandson of Erectheus, a probably mythical
king. He is credited with the invention of the saw, the gimlet, the
plumb-line, the axe, the wedge, the lever, masts and sails and even
of flying;--for he is said to have escaped from Crete to Sicily with
artificial wings. The story of Dædalus, like that of many other
mythological personages, is both interesting and irritating from the
mixture of the very probable, the highly improbable, and the entirely
impossible, in a jumble. But the story of Dædalus seems to make it
probable that all the things which he is reported to have invented
(except flying) were in use in Greece in prehistoric times.
As no records show to us that the inventions just enumerated (except
masts and sails) had been invented elsewhere, we may feel justified
in inferring that they were invented in Greece by Dædalus, or by some
other man bearing a different name,--or by some other men. The name
borne by the man is not important to us now; but it is important to
realize that such brilliant and original inventions were made so long
ago by a primeval people; especially since they were of a character
somewhat different from those invented in Egypt and Asia which we have
already noted. The invention of the gimlet seems the most brilliant
and original of those just spoken of; and one marvels that it should
have been invented at such a time; for the action of the gimlet was a
little more complicated than that of even the balista or the catapult.
It is true that the number of parts was less, that in fact there was
only one part. But that part turned around in one plane, and advanced
in another; it was less like anything that existed before than the
catapult was like the sling, or the balista was like the cross-bow.
There was no immediate forerunner of the gimlet. In other words, the
mental jump needed to invent the gimlet was from a base of nothing that
we can exactly specify.
[Illustration: Insurgent Captives Brought Before Darius]
A possible suggestion for the gimlet was the succession of inclined
planes by which one mounted to the top of an Assyrian or Chaldean
palace; these planes rising gradually on each of the four sides,
so as to form together what might be called a square spiral. It is
possible that a circular spiral may have been traced later around some
cylindrical shaft or column, and given the first suggestion for the
screw or gimlet. Of course, a gimlet is a kind of screw. The Greeks do
not seem to have applied their inventiveness after the time of Dædalus
to mechanical appliances, but to works of art and systems of religion
and philosophy. One of their most important inventions may be said to
be mid-way between: it consisted in adding vowels to the Phoenician
alphabet and producing the basis of the Latin and succeeding alphabets.
The Greeks were not naturally of a warlike disposition, and their
peculiarly jealous temperament prevented the various states and cities
from combining and forming a great nation. Their energetic character
and great intellectuality saved them, however, when Darius, King of
Persia, invaded Greece in 490 B. C.
By that time the Greeks had raised and trained an army of great
excellence. No especial inventiveness seems to have been exercised,
but the equipments of the men, their organization, their armor, their
weapons and their discipline had been brought to a standard exceedingly
high. All these advantages were needed; for the Persians were a warlike
people, their King Darius was an ambitious and successful conqueror,
and the number of Persians that invaded Greece was far greater than the
number that Greece could raise to fight them.
Had the Greeks been destitute of invention they would have followed
the most obvious course, that of shutting themselves up inside the
protection of the walls of Athens. Had they done this, the Persians
would have surrounded the city, shut them off from supplies from
outside, and slowly but surely forced them to surrender.
But, on the insistent advice of Miltiades, the Greeks advanced to
meet the Persians, leaving the shelter of their walls behind them. It
may not seem to some that Miltiades made any invention in planning
the campaign which he urged against much resistance, and which the
Athenians finally carried out. Yet his mental action was one allied
to that of making an invention; for his mind conceived a plan as a
purely mental picture, then developed into a workable project, and
then presented it as a concrete proposition. Later, when the hostile
forces met on the low plain of Marathon, Miltiades rejected the obvious
plan that an uninventive mind would have adopted. Instead of it, he
invented the plan of weakening his center, strengthening his flanks,
and departing from the usual custom of advancing slowly against the
enemy, in favor of advancing on the run. The plan (invention) worked
perfectly. The unsuspecting Persians broke through the center and
pursued the fleeing Athenians to a rough ground;--only to be caught
between the two flanks, like a nut in a nut-cracker, and crushed to
pieces.
It can hardly be seriously questioned that in this plan Miltiades
showed the abilities of the inventor, and in a highly brilliant and
highly important way. Had he fought the battle in the obvious way, the
great numerical superiority of the Persians could hardly have failed
to gain the victory, despite a really considerable superiority of the
Athenians in training and equipment. But the Persians were the victims
of a new and unexpected kind of attack. A new weapon suddenly brought
to bear on them would have had a similar effect.
This is the first illustration in recorded history of the influence
of invention on the deciding of a war. Its influence was enormous in
this case; for the battle of Marathon was one of the most decisive and
one of the most important battles ever fought. If it had been decided
contrariwise, Grecian civilization would have been stamped out, or so
completely stifled that it would never have risen to the heights it
afterwards attained; freedom of thought and government would have been
smothered, and the world would be immeasurably different now from what
it really is.
The defeat of the Persians was so decisive that they withdrew to
their own country, but with the determination of returning, and in
overwhelming force. By reason of a variety of circumstances, including
the death of the king, the invasion did not take place until ten years
later. Then, in the year 480 B. C., King Xerxes set out on a punitive
expedition against Greece with an enormous military and naval force.
Again Greece was saved from Persia by pure brain power, that of
Themistocles. Like Miltiades, he rejected the obvious. Discerning,
as no one else discerned, that the weakest point in the Persian
forces was the line of communication across the Ægean Sea, because
the ships of those days were fragile, and an invading army needed to
get supplies continually from Persia, he pointed out that although it
was the Persian army that would do the actual damage in Greece, yet
nevertheless, the major effort of the Athenians should not be spent on
their army but on their navy.
The difficulties he met in making the Athenians see the truth may
easily be imagined, from experiences in our own day. He succeeded at
last, however; so that by the time the Persians reached Greece, Greece
had a fleet that was very good, though not nearly so large as the
Persian. The fleets came near to each other in the vicinity of Athens.
The majority of the Athenian leaders advised that the Athenian fleet
should retreat toward the south and west, to the isthmus of Corinth,
and await the Persians there; because, if defeated, a safe retreat
could be effected. But Themistocles opposed this plan with all the
force and eloquence he could bring to bear; pointing out that the aim
of the Athenians should not be to find a safe line of retreat, but to
win a battle; and that the Bay of Salamis was the best place, for two
reasons. One reason was that the Persians would have to enter the bay
in column, because the entrance was narrow, and the Persian ships, as
they successively passed into the bay, would therefore be at a great
disadvantage against the combined attack of the Athenian ships, waiting
for them there; the other reason was that the bay was so small that the
great numbers and size of the Persian ships would be a disadvantage,
instead of an advantage. Themistocles (not without the use of
considerable diplomacy and even subterfuge) finally secured the assent
of the other Athenian leaders. The result was exactly what he predicted
that it would be. The Persian fleet was wholly defeated, and Greece
again was saved.
The great victory of the Greeks over the Persians wrought a powerful
stimulation among all the people, especially in Athens, and was
followed by the most extraordinary intellectual movement in the history
of the world. It lasted about a century and a half; and in no other
country, and at no other period, has so much intellectual achievement
been accomplished by so few people in so short a time.
Before the Persian wars, the Greeks had already shown an extraordinary
originality in art and literature; especially in architecture,
sculpture and poetry. Naturally these peaceful arts languished during
the wars; but after the Persian invaders had been finally ejected, they
rose with renewed vigor, stimulated by the patriotic enthusiasm of the
nation as a whole.
It was in Athens, and among the Athenians that most of the movement
was carried on. The principal state in Greece besides Athens then
was Sparta. The Spartans devoted themselves mainly to warlike and
allied arts, while the Athenians devoted themselves mainly to the
beautification of Athens; though they were careful to guard it
adequately by maintaining an excellent navy, surrounding the city with
high walls, and building two long parallel walls from Athens to Piræus,
its seaport.
It would be out of place in a book like this to attempt any description
or discussion of the various phases of the intellectual activities that
rose with such startling quickness, and developed into such important
movements, during the century and a half that followed the Persian
wars; especially as this has already been done by many scholars,
in many languages, and at many times. A very brief and elementary
statement may, however, be made, for the purpose of illustrating the
influence of invention on history.
The main characteristic of the movement as a whole and of every
one of the various channels which it followed, was originality. No
such perception of beauty had ever been evidenced before; no such
conceptions of logic, philosophy or science.
Accompanying these was a conception of free government equally
original. Whether the government of Athens was the cause of the
intellectual rise, or the intellectual rise was the cause of the
government, may safely be left to scholars to debate; for the purposes
of the present discussion, it seems sufficient that they co-existed and
had together a powerful influence on history.
The greatest genius that guided the intellectual forces of the
Athenians in the matter of government was that of Pericles, who ruled
their minds by pure force of argument and persuasion, from about 445
to 431 B. C. Athens and her subject cities formed a virtual empire,
small in extent, but powerful in influence; though in form it was a
democracy. In some ways it was the most perfect democracy that ever
has existed even to this day; for not only was every citizen available
for office, but he was expected to take active part in deciding public
measures, and to be really qualified to hold office.
This idea was put into practical operation by a careful system of
payment for every public service; to the end that even the poorest
citizen should be enabled to hold office, and a wealthy office-holding
caste prevented from existing. To so great an extent was this carried
out that, by the time that the Age of Pericles ceased and the
Peloponnesian War began, almost every citizen was in the pay of the
state. The perfect equality of all the citizens, and their community
of interests and privileges, was recognized by supplying them at
times with free tickets to places of amusement, and by banqueting the
people on great occasions at the expense of the state. To distribute
widely the powers and duties of citizenship, exceedingly large juries
were established for the trials of all cases. There was no king or
president or prime minister. The source of authority was the Assembly
which included every citizen over eighteen years of age, and held forty
meetings a year. Cooperating, as a sort of committee, was a Council of
Five Hundred, whose members were chosen by lot each year from citizens
over thirty years of age.
The success of the Athenian democracy has had a powerful influence ever
since on history; because it has supplied not only a precedent but an
encouragement to every people to try to escape from the individual
restrictions that monarchies and all "strong governments" tend to
impose. But it had another though less powerful influence also,
which continued for a long while, but now has ceased, in supplying a
precedent for slavery. For while the citizens of Athens were free, only
the sons of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers could be citizens;
many thousand workers and merchants of all kinds could take no part in
the government, and there were besides an enormous number of slaves.
It was to a great degree the fact of slavery that made possible the
success of the so-called Athenian democracy; for it liberated the
citizens in very great measure from the drudgery of life, and gave them
leisure to devote themselves to the study of government and the arts.
In addition, Athens acquired great wealth from the spoils of its wars
and the tribute of its subject states. This wealth was expended largely
in the beautifying of Athens, and in the consequent encouragement
and opportunity to artists of all kinds. Naturally, the art most
immediately encouraged was that of architecture; and that the
encouragement met with ready and great success the most beautiful ruins
in the world superbly testify. The directing genius in this work and
in all the others was Pericles, who stimulated the Athenians with his
conception and description of a city worthy to symbolize the power and
glory of the empire. The twin arts of architecture and sculpture worked
together and in harmony; and a city more beautiful than ever known
before, or ever known since, testified to the soundness and brilliancy
of the conception and to the constructive ability of the Athenians to
embody it in material form.
The poets and scholars kept pace with the statesmen and the architects
and the sculptors; but the philosophers surpassed them all. For, while
the successful democracy of Athens is a model still, and while the
Parthenon and the statue of Apollo are models still, yet an integral
part of the system of government (slavery) has been abjured by the
civilized world, and the temples and the statues have been for the
pleasure of but a few; while the teachings of the philosophers have
been the basis on which has rested ever since much of the intellectual
progress of mankind.
It may be noted here that, as men have progressed up the steep road to
civilization, the only guides they have had have been men who have not
themselves passed over the road before, and whose only qualification
as guides has lain in some attribute of the mind that enabled them
to survey the road a little farther ahead than the others could, and
to point out the paths to take, and the obstructions to avoid. Man's
physical instincts guide him considerably as to the methods to preserve
his physical existence; but they help him not at all to lift himself
above his physical self, and in many ways they hinder him. It seems
to be the office of the mind both to discern the upward paths and to
stimulate the will to overcome the difficulties and dangers in the way.
Of the great pointers of the way, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and
others, it might be deemed presumptuous of the present author to do
more than speak; and of the great stimulators, Æschuylus, Sophocles,
Euripedes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and, above all, Demosthenes
as well. But because it is pertinent to our subject it is instructive
for us to note that the main distinctive feature of the work of each
was originality. It is true that it is the completed work in the case
of each that meets our gaze; it is true that the superficial impression
would be the same, even if each work had been a copy of some work that
had gone before; in the same way that, superficially, many a copy of
an oil painting is as good as the original. But from the standpoint
of influence on the future, it is the originator rather than the
copyist who wields the influence; just as it is the basic inventor of a
mechanical appliance rather than the man who improves upon it.
The Athenians and Spartans became involved in the Peloponnesian War,
that lasted from 431 to 404 B. C., and ended with the capture of
Athens. The Spartans thereupon became dominant in Greece, but only to
be mastered by the Thebans in 371 B. C. The little jealous states of
Greece were never able to agree together long, and no one state was
ever able to unite them. But the half-barbarian people of Macedonia,
under Philip their king, after developing their army, according to a
novel system invented by him, overcame and then united under their sway
the highly cultured but now military weak states that had despised them.
Possibly, it would somewhat strain the meaning of the word invention,
to declare that Philip made a radically new invention, when he
improved on the Theban phalanx, and devised his system of military
training; for kings and other leaders had trained armies long before
Philip lived, and Philip departed only in what some might call detail
from the methods that had been used before. But, at the same time,
it was an act, or a series of acts, betokening great initiative and
originality, for a man ruling a weak collection of tribes such as dwelt
in Macedon, to create out of such crude material as he began with, such
an extraordinary army as he ultimately was able to lead to battle. To
accomplish this it was necessary for him to conceive the idea of doing
it, then to embody his conception in a formulated plan, and then bring
forth the finished product. The thought of doing it must have come to
him:--how else could he get it? An idea comes from outside through the
mental eye to the mind; as a ray of light comes from outside through
the physical eye to the retina.
The picture made on Philip's mind must have impressed him profoundly,
for he spent the rest of his life in giving it "a local habitation
and a name." To accomplish it cost him years of continual effort of
many kinds, but he did accomplish it. He did, as a result, produce a
machine, as truly a machine as Stephenson ever produced, but made up of
many more parts; each part independent of any other, and yet dependent
on every other, and all working together, for a common purpose.
Let us remind ourselves again that a machine composed of inanimate
parts only is only one kind of machine; for a machine may be composed
of animate parts, or inanimate parts, or of parts of which some are
animate and some inanimate. Clearly, it makes no difference, so far
as the act of invention goes, whether a man uses animate or inanimate
parts; the essential of invention is the creation of a new thing. If a
man merely puts two pieces of wood and a piece of string into a pile,
or if he merely collects a number of men together, no invention is made
and nothing is created. But if he so combines the two pieces of wood
and the string as to make a bow and arrow; or if he combines a modified
Theban phalanx with masses of cavalry and catapults in a novel and
effective way as Philip did, invention is exercised and something is
created.
Before Philip's time a phalanx was used to bear the brunt of the
battle, and to overwhelm the enemy by mere strength and force; as the
Thebans did at Leuctra and Mantinea. But Philip conceived the idea of
merely holding the enemy with his phalanx assisted by the catapults,
and hurling his cavalry against their flanks. Philip's army, as Philip
used it, was a machine and a very powerful one:--each part independent
of every other, yet dependent on every other--all the parts working
together for a common purpose. Philip conceived the idea of making
this machine, and afterwards made it; just as Ericsson more than two
thousand years later conceived the idea of making a "_Monitor_" and
afterwards made it.
By means of his machine Philip defeated the Greeks at Cheronea in the
year 338 B. C., just as Ericsson by means of his machine defeated the
_Merrimac_ at Newport News in the year 1862 A. D., exactly twenty-two
centuries later. The two machines differed, it is true. Yet they did
not differ so much as one might unthinkingly suppose; for each machine
was made up of parts, of which some were animate and some were not; and
in each machine every part, animate or inanimate, cooperated with all
the others; and all cooperated together, to carry out the inventor's
purpose, the destruction of the enemy.
The influence of Philip's invention began before Philip died, and it
continues to this day. For after Philip's death, his son Alexander put
it to work at once on the task of subduing thoroughly all of Greece,
and then subduing Asia.
The influence of the machine in subduing even Greece alone must not be
regarded lightly; not so much because Greece was subdued, as because
the various little states were by that means brought together; and
because it illustrates the fact that without a machine, no great number
of people can work together. It _was because of the absence of any
machine_ that the Grecian states acted separately and antagonistically,
instead of in cooperation.
After subduing Greece, Alexander took his machine across the
Hellespont, in the year 334 B. C., to try it on the Persian troops
in Asia Minor. The machine worked so successfully at a battle on the
Granicus that Alexander took it south, and with its aid was able to
conquer all of Asia Minor in about a year.
It may be objected that it is not correct to attribute all of
Alexander's success to the excellence of his machine; and this
objection would have great force and receive the approval of most
people, for the reason that, in most histories, the main credit is
given to the energy of Alexander and the courage of his troops;--though
the excellence of the training and organization bequeathed by Philip is
admitted.
To this hypothetical objection the answer may be made that the ultimate
result was due to both the machine and the excellence with which it was
operated; that is, to the product of what the machine could do if it
were used with perfect skill and the percentage of skill with which it
was actually used. This statement is, of course, true of all machines
and instruments, as the author has often pointed out, in articles and
addresses.
In the case of Alexander and his army, the percentage of skill, of
course, was high; but Alexander and each one of his soldiers was only
a part of the machine; and even their skill was part of the machine
in the sense that it was a characteristic included in the original
design of Philip. In other words, we should not fall into the error of
dissociating the skill of Alexander and his soldiers from the machine
itself; because it was part of Philip's invention that the training
should produce that skill. The system of training was part of the
invention.
It is true, however, and exceedingly important, that the degree of
skill which Alexander brought to bear personally was far in excess of
what any system of training could possibly produce. When we read of the
amazing victories that Alexander made over superior forces of highly
trained warriors, we see that Philip of Macedon should not be given
all the credit; that the genius of Philip of Macedon was not the only
genius contributing to the result. We see that genius of some kind
directed the decisions of Alexander. What were the characteristics of
that genius?
Courage? Yes; history tells of no one possessing higher courage,
both physical and moral, than Alexander. Not only was he physically
brave, not only did he dare physical danger of many kinds, and on many
occasions, but he was morally brave; he did not shirk responsibility;
he did not fear to take enormous risks; he did not hesitate to reject
advice, even the advice of his most experienced and able generals; he
was willing to stake everything, sometimes, on the success of some
wholly untried expedient of his own devising.
But does mere courage, even of so many kinds--and even if it be added
to trained skill and the possession of an admirable machine--do they
all together explain the amazing successes of Alexander? No. What does
explain them?
Genius? Yes, but the word genius is only a word, and explains nothing;
for the reason that no one knows what the word genius means. It is
merely a label that we attach to a man who is able to do things that
other men cannot do. But granting that the possession of "genius" is
an explanation of Alexander's being able to accomplish what he did, in
what way did that genius operate? in what way did it help him to win so
many victories and extricate himself from so many perilous situations?
By inventing methods and devising schemes and improvising plans
that an uninventive man would not have thought of. The story of the
Gordian knot may or may not be true; but it seems credible, because
it was exactly the kind of a thing that Alexander might have been
expected to do in such an emergency. Posing as a great conqueror, he
was (according to the legend) suddenly confronted with the untying of
a knot, the successful accomplishment of which would make him master
of Asia. He realized that he could not untie it. Any man but a man
like Alexander would have tried it and acknowledged failure, or have
declined to try it: placing himself in a defensive position in either
case. But Alexander draws his sword and cuts the knot in two, thereby
accomplishing whatever the untying of the knot would have accomplished,
but in an unexpected way. Alexander's victories and escapes from
perilous positions were largely accomplished by unexpected measures.
But Alexander showed his inventive ability before he invaded Persia;
in his very first campaign undertaken to subdue a revolt in Thessaly
immediately after he ascended to the throne. The Thessalians opposed
him in a narrow defile. An ordinary man would have thought, as the
Thessalians did, that he was checkmated. But Alexander conceived and
executed the ingenious scheme of cutting a new road up the steep
side of the mountain, leading his army along that road, and suddenly
threatening the Thessalians in their helpless rear. Shortly afterward
in Thrace he reached a defile in the mountains which it was necessary
for him to pass, but which he found defended by a force that had
stationed a number of war-chariots at the top, to be rolled down on the
Macedonians. Alexander immediately ordered his infantry to advance up
the path and to open their ranks whenever possible to let the chariots
rush through; but when that could not be done to fall on their knees
and hold their shields together as a sort of roof on which the chariots
would slide, and from which they would roll off. This amazing story is
supposed to be true; and it is said to have succeeded perfectly.
Not long afterward Alexander had to cross the Danube with his army and
all their equipments and attack a force of barbarians on the farther
bank. This he saw he could not do by the use of any means available of
an ordinary kind. Nothing daunted, he conceived and executed the scheme
of floating his equipments across at night in floats made of tent
skins, filled with hay.
The next clear example that we find of Alexander's inventiveness
was when he undertook the siege of Tyre. Tyre stood on an island
of Phoenicia in the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.
It was surrounded with a wall, very thick and very high, and was
separated from the shore by half a mile of deep water. To capture
such a place was no small undertaking for a man who had no ships. But
Alexander conceived and executed a scheme that worked successfully.
In accordance with that scheme, he built a causeway that extended
from the shore out toward the island on which Tyre stood. Naturally,
the Tyrians obstructed his efforts by sending fireships against
him and firing projectiles; and these tactics became more and more
effective as the causeway approached the city. Then Alexander visited
some of the jealous neighbors of Tyre that had submitted to him, and
secured a fleet of some eighty ships; and these he led, as the admiral
commanding, against the Tyrian harbor.
By this time, the causeway was well protected with catapults and
war-engines of various kinds, and had been carried close up to the
island. Yet little actual damage could be done to Tyre, because of the
height and thickness of the walls, and because Alexander's galleys that
he had equipped with war-engines could not get close enough, by reason
of large boulders under water. Alexander then equipped certain galleys
with windlasses to root up the boulders, the galleys being fitted
with chain cables to prevent divers from cutting them. Tyre was soon
afterwards reduced to a purely passive defense and consequent surrender.
The story of the siege of Tyre, if read in the light of the conditions
of the comparative barbarism of the world in those days, is a record of
inventiveness, on the part of Alexander, so convincing and complete, as
to entitle Alexander to a place in the first rank among the inventors
of our race.
Shortly afterward Alexander reached the town of Gaza, the great
stronghold of the Philistines. It stood on high ground, and was
more than two miles from the sea. Alexander's engineers reported to
him that, as the fleet could not assist them, and as the walls were
themselves very high and stood on a high hill, the walls could never be
stormed. Things looked serious. They were serious; and failure would
then have come to any man, except a man like Alexander. He cut the
Gordian knot by ordering that ramparts be thrown up as high as the top
of the walls, and war engines placed on the ramparts. This was done,
and the city was taken.
Alexander's campaigns in Egypt, and afterward in western Asia, were
characterized by the same quickness and daring, both in conception and
in execution, that had marked his opening campaigns in Greece. Later,
when advancing toward Persia, he encountered a tribe of hillsmen in
the Uxian Pass, who, like the Thessalians and the Thracians, thought
they had blocked his passage by opposing him in so narrow a defile.
Alexander literally "circumvented" them by making a night march over
a difficult mountain pass, and astonishing them by an attack on
their rear the following morning. Shortly afterward a like situation
presented itself, when an army opposed him in a narrow defile called
the Persian Gates, that was fortified with a wall. Alexander soon
realized that the position of his enemy was impregnable. He learned,
however, that there was a path that led around the pass, though it was
exceedingly dangerous, particularly to men in armor and to horses,
and especially at that time, when snow and ice were on the ground. He
again utilized his former invention (circumvention) and with his former
success; though the conditions under which it was accomplished were
much more difficult.
The four examples just given of literally circumventing an uninventive
enemy illustrate in the simplest form the influence of invention on
military history.
After it became clear to Alexander that his invasion of Asia would
be successful from a military point of view, his active imagination
presented to his mind a picture of a grand and noble empire, embracing
the whole world, but dominated and inspired by the spirit of the
civilization of Greece. To develop this conception into an actual
reality, became at once the object of his efforts. To develop it, he
decided to adopt in some measure the characteristics and dress of
the people in whatever province he might be, and to take such steps
in organizing provinces, founding cities and establishing systems, as
to weld all into one empire, under himself, as ruler. One can hardly
credit the authoritative account he reads of Alexander's bewildering
success. He seems not only to have won battles, and built cities,
and organized provinces, but actually to have super-posed Greek
civilization on Persian civilization!
In one of his most important later battles, Alexander again utilized
his inventiveness. If he had not done so, he would assuredly have lost
the battle. It was against King Porus in northwestern India. Alexander
found the forces of Porus encamped on the opposite side of the Hydaspes
River, with the evident intention of preventing him from crossing. As
the army of Porus in men alone was evidently equal to his own, and
as it was reinforced with a multitude of elephants, Alexander was
apparently confronted with a problem impossible of solution. It would
have been impossible to anyone but a man like Alexander. He, however,
by means of various feints and ingenious stratagems, managed to get
across at night about sixteen miles up the river, using boats that he
had constructed, and floats of skin stuffed with straw. Porus took up
a position on the opposite shore and made ready to receive attack, his
front preceded by war chariots and elephants. Alexander had neither;
but he did have brains and originality. So he simply held the enemy
with his infantry, and then made a determined attack with cavalry and
archers on the enemy's left flank, and especially on the elephants. The
elephants soon got beyond control; and the rest of the battle was a
fight between a highly trained Macedonian phalanx, assisted by cavalry,
and an Oriental mob.
Alexander died in Babylon when not quite thirty-three years old. In
actual and immediate achievement he surpassed perhaps every other man
who has ever lived. He founded an empire which he himself had conceived
and developed, which covered nearly all the then known world, and
which, though it was composed mainly of barbarous and semi-barbarous
people, was dominated by Greek thought. It is true that the empire
fell apart almost immediately after Alexander died. But it did not
fall into anarchy, or revert to its previous state: it was divided
into four parts, each of which was distinct, self-governing and well
organized. The two larger parts, the kingdom of the Seleucidæ, which
occupied approximately the territory of Persia, and the kingdom of the
Ptolomies, or Egypt, continued as torch-bearers to civilization for
many centuries thereafter.
Of the two, the former was the larger and was probably the better,
from an administrative point of view; but Egypt represented the finer
civilization; for Alexandria, with its library and its wonderful
museum, became the seat of learning and the resort of the scholars of
the world, and the centre of the Hellenistic civilization that followed
that of Greece.
This Hellenistic civilization, it may here be pointed out, was in some
respects as fine as that of Greece, and in some respects was finer,
because it was more mature. But (perhaps for the reason that it was
more mature) it lacked much of the element that was the highest in the
Greek, the element that gave Greek civilization greater influence on
history than any other civilization ever had--the creative element. The
creative period of Greece ceased when her political liberty was lost.
Furthermore, the immense amount of wealth that poured into the Grecian
cities and the Græco-Oriental world, by reason of the putting into
circulation of gold that had been stored away in Oriental palaces,
as well as by the commercial exploitation of the riches of the East,
brought about a general effeminizing of all classes of society, and the
consequent dulling of their minds.
[Illustration: The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria in the
Hellenistic Age]
Nevertheless, there was great intellectual activity in the
Græco-Oriental world, and a certain measure of invention, though little
was of a basic kind. Euclid improved the science of geometry, and put
it in virtually the same shape as that in which it has been taught
since, even to this day. Aristarchus, the astronomer, announced the
doctrine that the earth revolves around the sun and rotates on its
own axis; and Hipparchus invented the plan of fixing the positions of
places on the earth by their latitudes north and south of the Equator
and their longitude east or west of a designated meridian. Hippocrates
and Galen conceived and developed the foundations of the science of
medicine of the present day. Eratosthenes estimated with extraordinary
accuracy the circumference of the earth, and founded the science of
geography.
But the greatest of all of the original workers of that time was
Archimedes, who lived at Syracuse in Sicily, and was killed by mistake
when Syracuse was captured in the year 212 B. C., while engaged in
drawing a geometrical figure on the sand. His principal fame is as a
mathematician; but as a great inventor of mechanical appliances, he
is the first man recognized as such in history. The invention with
which his name is most frequently linked is that of the Archimedean
screw. This consisted of a tube, wound spirally around an inclined
axle, and so disposed that when the lower end of the tube was dipped
into water and the axle was rotated water would rise in the tube--as
shavings do when a screw is screwed down into wood. It constituted a
very convenient pump and was so used. This was, of course, a mechanical
invention of the utmost originality and value, and forms one of the
clearly defined stepping-stones to civilization.
There seems to be a belief in the minds of some that Archimedes was the
inventor of the lever. The lever was, of course, invented long before
he lived; but the laws of its operation and the principle that the
weight on each side of the fulcrum, multiplied by its distance from
the fulcrum, is equal to the weight on the other side, multiplied by
its distance (when the lever is in equilibrium), seems to have been
established by him.
Many stories are told of his exploits when Syracuse was besieged by
the Romans, but they are rather vague. The best known story is that he
arranged a great many mirrors in such a way that he concentrated so
many rays of sunlight on some Roman ships that they took fire. Whether
this is true or not is not definitely known; but many centuries later
Buffon, the French scientist, made an arrangement of plane mirrors
with which he set fire to wood 200 feet away.
The greatest single exploit of Archimedes was his discovery and
demonstration of the hydrostatic principle that the weight of liquid
displaced by a body floating in it is equal to that of the body.
The story is that the king gave him the apparently impossible task
of determining the quantity of gold and the quantity of silver in a
certain gold coin, in making which the king suspected the workmen of
stealing part of the gold and substituting silver. Pondering this
subject later while lying in his bath, Archimedes suddenly realized
that his body displaced a bulk of water equal to that part of his body
that was immersed, and conceived the consequent law; and the conception
was so startling and so vivid that he rushed unclad out into the street
crying, "I have found it, I have found it."
The story as a story may not be exactly true; but if Archimedes
had realized the full purport and the never-ending result of his
conception, he would probably have done something even more eccentric
than he did.
* * * * *
Archimedes esteemed mechanical inventions as greatly inferior in value
to those speculations and demonstrations that convince the mind, and
considered that his chief single work was discovering the mathematical
relation between a sphere and a cylinder just containing it.
Whether this discovery and the discovery of the hydrostatic principle
just mentioned were inventions or not, depends, of course, on the
meaning of the word invention. Within the meaning of the word as
employed heretofore in this book, both seem to have been inventions.
Each made a definite creation and each caused something to exist,
the like of which had never existed before. Furthermore, the mental
processes followed resemble very closely the conception and formulation
of a religion or a theory, the conception and composing of a new piece
of music, story or poem, the conception and developing of any new
plan or scheme; the conception and embodying in material form of any
mechanical device.
It is not asserted, of course, that all inventions are on a dead level
of equality, simply because they are inventions. Evidently there are
degrees of excellence among inventions as among all other things.
CHAPTER IV
INVENTION IN ROME: ITS RISE AND FALL
We have noted, up to a time approximately that of Archimedes, a
continual succession of inventions of many kinds, that formed
stepping-stones to civilization so large and plain, that we can see
them even from this distance.
We now come to a period lasting more than a thousand years, in
the first half of which there was a gradually decreasing lack of
inventiveness shown, and in the latter half a cessation almost complete.
The nation that followed Greece as the dominant nation of the world was
Rome. She became more truly a dominant nation than Greece ever was; but
her civilization was built on that of Greece, and her success even in
war and government was due largely to following where Greece had led.
That Rome in her early days should have followed the methods of Greece
was natural of course; for the two countries were close together, and
the methods of Greece had brought success. The early religion of Rome
was so like that of Greece that even to this day the conceptions of
most of us regarding Zeus and Jupiter, Poseidon and Neptune, Aphrodite
and Venus are apt to become confused.
Like the Greeks, the Romans first were gathered in city-states that
were governed by kings; and as with the Greeks, more republican forms
were adopted later. In one important particular, the Roman practice
diverged from the Greek, and that was in incorporating conquered
states into the parent state, and granting their inhabitants the
privileges of citizenship; instead of keeping them in the condition
of mere subject states. The Roman system was somewhat like the system
of provinces established by the Assyrians. It forms the basis of the
"municipal system" of the free states of the present day, in which
local self-government is carried on, under the paramount authority of
the state.
It may be pointed out here that the conception of such an idea and its
successful development into an effective machine of government by the
Romans constituted an invention; though in view of what had been done
before by Assyria and Greece, it cannot be called a basic invention.
The early Romans were very different in their mental characteristics
from the Greeks; for they were stern, warlike, intensely practical, and
possessed of an extraordinary talent for what we now call "team work."
As a nation they were not so inventive as the Greeks; but the Roman,
Cæsar, was the greatest military inventor who ever lived.
As might be expected, their early endeavors pertained to war, and their
first improvements were in warlike things. One improvement that was
marked by considerable inventiveness was in changing the phalanx into
the legion. The phalanx, the historian Botsford tells us, was "invented
by the Spartans, probably in the eighth century B. C.," and consisted
of an unbroken line of warriors, several ranks deep. The Thebans
improved on this; and from the Theban, Philip developed the Macedonian
phalanx with which Alexander fought his way through Asia. The Romans
under Servius Tullius developed this into the Roman phalanx, which was
different only in detail. The essential characteristic of the phalanx
was strength. This was gained by the close support given by each man
to his neighbor, the personal strength of each man and the trained
co-operation of all. A tremendous blow was given to an enemy's line
when a phalanx struck it.
In the early wars among the hills of Italy, the Romans found the
phalanx too rigid for such uneven country; and it was in endeavoring
to invent a substitute that they finally developed the legion. This
machine was much more flexible, the individual soldiers had more
room for their movements, and yet the machine seemed to possess the
necessary rigidity when the shock of impact came. The heavy infantry
was in three lines, and each line was divided into ten companies, or
"maniples." The burden of the first attack was borne by the first
line. If unsuccessful, the first line withdrew through gaps in the
second line, and the second line took up the task;--and then the third,
composed of the most seasoned troops. The attack usually began with the
hurling of javelins, and was followed at once by an assault with the
Roman strong short swords.
Now the legion was just as truly an invented machine as a steam engine
is; and it had a greater influence on history than the steam engine has
ever had thus far. It was by means of their legions that the Romans
passed outside of the walls of Rome, and conquered all of Italy. It
was by means of their legions that the Romans conquered all the coast
peoples that bordered the Mediterranean Sea, subdued Gaul, Europe and
Egypt and Asia, and became the greatest masters of the world that the
world has ever seen.
The first war of the Romans that history calls great was their war
against the splendid and wealthy city of Carthage, situated on the
opposite side of the Mediterranean, inhabited by descendants of the
Phoenicians. They were an aggressive and energetic people, but only
commercially. They were not of the warlike cast, and delegated the work
of national defense to hired soldiers and sailors. They had one great
advantage over the Romans in the possession of an excellent navy.
The Romans resolved to create a navy. With characteristic energy
and practical ability, they devoted themselves at once to both the
acquisition of the personnel and the material, and the adequate
training of the crews. It is stated that within two months from the
time of starting, Rome possessed a hundred quinqueremes, the largest
galleys of those days, having five tiers of rowers; though they had had
none when the war broke out. The first naval battle took place near the
promontory of Mylæ. Naturally, the Romans were at a great disadvantage
as compared with the experienced officers and sailors in the
Carthaginian fleet; for though the Roman soldier was far better than
the Carthaginian, the Roman sailor was inexperienced and unskilful.
To remedy the difficulty, the Romans made a simple but brilliant
invention. They provided each quinquereme with a "corvus," that
consisted essentially of a drawbridge that could be lowered quickly,
and that carried a sharp spike at its outer end; and then arranged a
plan whereby each quinquereme should get alongside of a Carthaginian,
drop the drawbridge at such a time that the spike would hold the outer
end of the drawbridge in place on the Carthaginian deck, and Roman
soldiers should then rush across the drawbridge and attack the inferior
Carthaginian soldiers.
Few more brilliant inventions have ever been made; few have been more
successful and effective. The battle ended in a perfect victory for the
Romans, and constituted the initial step in the subjugation of Carthage
by Rome.
There were three wars in all, called Punic Wars. The great Carthaginian
General, Hannibal, invaded Italy by land in the Second War, and after
a campaign marked with a high order of daring and ability, threatened
Rome herself after a brilliant victory near Lake Trasimene. Another
victory followed at Cannæ, but a decisive disaster later on the
Metaurus River. So the Second War was won by Rome. But Carthage still
existed, and menaced the commercial, naval and military dominance of
Rome. Therefore war was brought about at last by Rome, and Carthage
destroyed completely.
The conduct of Rome toward Carthage cannot be justified on any grounds
of any system of morality accepted at the present day; and yet it
cannot reasonably be denied that it was better for human progress that
Rome should prevail than Carthage. The Romans, harsh and ruthless
as they were, were less so than the Carthaginians; and they had an
element of strong manliness and a comprehensive grasp of things beyond
mere commerce and money-getting and ease and comfort that the Semitic
Carthaginians wholly lacked. The effect of the conquest of Carthage by
Rome was a little like that of the conquest of Persia by Alexander.
During the same year (146 B. C.) when Rome destroyed Carthage, she also
destroyed Corinth in Greece, and brought Greece and Macedonia under her
sway. She had previously (190 B. C.) defeated Antiochus the Great, and
taken from him nearly all his territory in Asia Minor.
By the year 58 B. C., Rome had become the most powerful nation in the
world and still preserved a republican form of government. In that
year, 58 B. C., the man who probably is the most generally regarded
as the greatest man who has ever lived, appeared upon the stage of
history. His name was Julius Cæsar.
He appeared in that year, because he went then from Rome to Gaul,
and started on those brilliant and in many respects unprecedented
campaigns which have had so profound an effect on history, and which
for originality in conception and execution have had no rivals since.
At this time, Italy and the lands of Africa and Asia on which
Alexander had impressed the civilization of Greece, were prosperous
and well-governed; but beyond those countries only barbarous customs
prevailed, and only a primitive civilization reigned. The lands that
lay north and northwest of Italy, throughout all Gaul, were inhabited
by savage tribes that were in a state of continual war with each other.
In the southern and middle parts the effects of Roman civilization
might be dimly seen; but in the southwestern part, and in the north,
especially among the German tribes on the Rhine, and the Belgæ near the
North Sea, a condition of virtually pure savagery prevailed.
Into such a country Cæsar marched, at the head of a body of men wholly
inferior in numbers to those they were to meet, not superior to them
in courage or physical strength, but considerably superior to them
in discipline, and vastly superior in the weapons and methods that
had gradually been invented, with the progress of civilization. Thus,
while the Roman machine was superior as a machine to any that the
Gauls could bring to bear, it was smaller; so that the question to be
decided was whether the superior excellence of the Roman machine was
great enough to balance its inferiority in size. Looking back from our
vantage ground on the history of the campaigns that followed, we feel
inclined to answer the question in the negative, unless we consider
Cæsar himself a part of the machine. It is true that the campaigns were
decided in favor of the Roman machine; but there seems little ground
for doubting that they would not have been so decided, if the genius
of Cæsar had not managed the Roman machine and made improvements from
time to time.
Cæsar had had little experience as a soldier, but his habits of life
and traits of character were of the military kind. As the campaigns
progressed, his courage, equanimity and rapidity of thought and action
were continually displayed;--yet not to such a degree as to put him
in a higher class than many other generals of history, or to account
wholly for his marvellous successes. One peculiar ability, however,
he possessed and exercised in a degree greater than any other general
of history: and it was by the exercise of that ability that his most
extraordinary victories were achieved, and his generalship especially
distinguished from the generalship of others. That ability was
inventiveness.
His first contact was with the Swiss (Helvetii), who were about to
leave the barrenness of their mountain lands, and march west to the
fertile lands beyond. As this would take them through Roman territory
and tend to drive the Gauls into Italy, open Switzerland to occupation
by the Germans, and point a road thence for them also into Italy,
Cæsar hastened to the Rhône River, destroyed the bridge which they
would naturally go over, and forbade the Swiss to attempt to cross the
river. The Swiss pleaded with Cæsar to permit them to cross. As Cæsar
realized that the Swiss were too greatly superior in force to be kept
back, unless he could strengthen himself in some way, he asked time
for reflection, and told them to return in two weeks. When the Swiss
returned at the end of that time, their astonished eyes disclosed to
them the fact that Cæsar had constructed walls and trenches and forts
at every point where a passage could reasonably be attempted.
It may be objected that walls and trenches and forts were not new, and
that therefore Cæsar invented nothing. This may be admitted as an
academic proposition; but nevertheless, it was clearly the ingenious
and wholly unexpected construction of certain appliances by Cæsar that
opposed the barbarous Swiss with barriers which they could not pass. It
may even be argued with much reason that the conception and successful
execution of Cæsar's plan as a whole constituted an invention, even
though the material used was old. Certain it is that a situation was
created which did not exist before, and that it was the creation of
this situation, and not the exercise of strength or courage, that was
_the determining factor_ in stopping the Swiss. Froude says of Cæsar,
"He was never greater than in unlooked-for difficulties. He never
rested. He was always inventing some new contrivance."
Cæsar realized fully the value in war of mechanical appliances,
and took careful measures before he left Italy to supply his army
adequately with them, and also with men trained to use them. Besides
the fighting men strictly considered, Cæsar took a considerable number
of engineers with him, and expert men for building bridges, and doing
mechanical work of many kinds. The ingenious and frequent use that
Cæsar made of these men and of mechanical appliances was the most
powerful single factor that contributed to his success.
The Swiss departing from Switzerland by another route, Cæsar pursued
them, and defeated a fourth of them in a battle on the banks of a river
which the other three-fourths had crossed. He then built a bridge
over the river and sent his army across. This feat alarmed the Swiss
more than their defeat; because Cæsar had built the bridge and sent
his army across in one day, whereas they had consumed twenty days in
merely crossing. The Swiss pleaded to be allowed to proceed; but Cæsar
was obdurate. A battle followed, in which the Swiss, though greatly
superior in numbers and reinforced by 15,000 allies, were decisively
beaten; not because of inferior courage or warlike skill, but by reason
of inferior equipments, mechanical appliances and weapons.
Cæsar's next battle was with the Germans. It was won, if not precisely
with inventiveness, at least with "brains." He learned that the
German matrons had declared, after certain occult proceedings, that
Heaven forbade them to fight before the new moon. Apprehending his
opportunity, he advanced his forces right up to the German camp,
thereby forcing them as valiant soldiers to come out and fight. Fight
they did, but under an obvious psychological disadvantage, and with the
natural result.
In this battle, as in others between the Romans and the barbarians,
it was noticeable that although their first onslaught was fine, the
barbarians seemed to be at a loss afterwards,--if anything unexpected
occurred, or if any reverse was sustained; whereas the Romans--and
especially Cæsar himself--never behaved so well as when threatened
with disaster. This may be expressed by saying that the barbarians, as
compared with the Romans, were wholly inferior in the inventiveness
needed to devise a new plan quickly.
Not long afterward, Cæsar advanced against the town of Noviodunum. He
soon saw that he could not take it by storm; and so he brought forward
his mechanical siege appliances. The psychological effect of these on
the barbarians was so tremendous that they at once pleaded for terms of
surrender.
After a battle with the Nervii, in which Cæsar defeated them
disastrously, largely because of his resourcefulness in emergency and
their lack of it, he advanced against a great barbarian stronghold
that looked down on steep rocks on three sides, and was protected by
a thick, high double wall on the fourth side. Cæsar made a fortified
rampart around the town, pushed his mantlets (large shields on wheels
protected on the sides and top) close up to the wall, and built a
tower. The barbarians laughed at this tower; seeing it so far away
that, they thought, no darts thrown from it could reach them. But when
they saw the tower actually moving toward them they were struck with
terror and began at once to sue for peace.
During the following winter the Veneti, a large tribe on the
northwestern coast, the most skilful seamen and navigators of Gaul,
stirred up a revolt that quickly and widely spread. The situation at
once became serious for Cæsar, for the reason that the Veneti could not
be subdued, except on the sea; and neither the Roman sailors nor the
Roman vessels were as good as were those of the Veneti. Nevertheless,
Cæsar ordered war-vessels to be built on the Loire River, and seamen
and rowers to be drafted from the Roman Province.
When the improvised fleet of the Romans and the thoroughly prepared
fleet of the Veneti came together, the latter was superior even in
numbers. Furthermore, the Romans were at a great disadvantage in the
matter of throwing projectiles, from the fact that the Veneti's decks
were higher than theirs.
But Cæsar had prepared a scheme that gave him victory. In accordance
with it, the Roman galleys rowed smartly against the Veneti ships, and
Roman sailors raised long poles on which were sharp hooks which they
put over the halliards that held up the sails. Then each Roman galley
rowed rapidly away, the halliards were cut, and down came the sails.
The Veneti ships became helpless at once and were immediately boarded;
with the result that, of all the number, only a few made their escape.
Somewhat later, Cæsar decided to cross the Rhine into the country of
the Sueves, and to impress them with the power of Rome by building a
bridge and marching his army across. This bridge and the quickness and
thoroughness with which it was built are still models for engineers;
for in ten days after he had decided to build it, at which time the
material was still standing in the forest, a bridge 40 feet wide had
been constructed. Across this Cæsar at once marched his legions. The
effect on the barbarous Germans can be imagined. It made them realize
that the Romans were a race superior to themselves in ways that they
could not measure or even understand; and it impressed them with that
fear which is the most depressing of all fears, the fear of the unknown.
Did Cæsar make an invention? This depends on the meaning of the word
invention. Cæsar did not invent the bridge; but he did conceive and
carry into execution a highly original, concrete and successful scheme.
By it he accomplished as much as a victorious campaign would have
accomplished, and without shedding any blood. _He devised means which
created a state of thought in the minds of his enemies that destroyed
their will to fight._ Therein lay his invention.
Cæsar then conceived the idea of going across the water to the island
of Britain, about which little was known. After having a survey made
of the coast, he took his legions across in about eighty vessels. He
had to fight to make a landing, of course; but he succeeded, and then
formed his camp. A Roman camp, we may now remind ourselves, was so
distinctly a Roman conception, and so distinctly a part of the Roman
system of conducting war, that it almost constituted an invention.
Whenever a Roman army halted, even for one night, they intrenched
themselves within a square enclosure, surrounded with a ditch and
a palisade of stakes, and made a temporary little city, laid with
streets. In such a camp they were reasonably safe against any attack
that barbarians could make.
But a storm arose that drove some of Cæsar's ships ashore and some out
to sea. In this emergency, Cæsar's resourcefulness and energy directed
the work of recovery and repair, and enabled the Romans to collect and
put into good condition nearly all their ships. Cæsar returned shortly
afterward to Gaul; arrived there, he gave directions for building and
equipping another and larger fleet.
In the following July (54 B. C.), he started again for Britain. This
time he took five legions and some cavalry and had about 800 vessels.
He landed and formed his camp, and then advanced inland;--but another
storm arose that scattered his ships. He returned at once to the coast,
and instituted such prompt and resourceful measures that in ten days he
was able to resume his march. On this march, which took him far inland,
he was able to overcome all opposition; largely because, after the
first onset, the barbarians seemed to be without any plan of action,
while Cæsar was at his best.
_Cæsar had the ability to invent under circumstances of the utmost
danger and excitement._
Cæsar's remaining campaigns in Gaul were marked with the same
resourcefulness and originality on his part, and the same lack of
resourcefulness and originality on the part of the barbarians. Cæsar
would continually do something that the barbarians had not expected him
to do. True, they gradually learned some of his schemes and methods
from him; but only to find that he had then some newer schemes and
methods.
Cæsar at one time remarked that wise men anticipate possible
difficulties, and decide beforehand what they will do, if certain
possible occasions arise. Does not this process involve invention,
in cases where the possible occasions are not of the ordinary and
expectable kind? In such cases, does it not require imagination to
foresee the possible occasions, and form a correct picture on the mind
of the resulting situations? This being done, does it not require the
exercise of the constructive faculty afterwards, to make a concrete and
effective plan to meet them?
If it be so, then we may reasonably declare that, of all the factors
that contributed to the successes in Gaul of Cæsar, the most powerful
single factor was his inventiveness.
The final crisis came when Cæsar besieged Alesia, and Vercingetorix,
who had taken refuge in it, sent out a call for succor, that was
eagerly and promptly responded to; for it was plain to the barbarians
that Cæsar, being held in position fronting a fortress that he could
not successfully storm, would be in a precarious condition if attacked
vigorously in his rear. Attacked vigorously he was; for the barbarians
came in his rear with about 250,000 men; Cæsar having only 50,000, and
the enemy in front having 80,000.
But it required somewhat more than a month for the barbarians to unite
and reach Alesia. With his wonted energy and resourcefulness, Cæsar had
by this time cast up siege works all around the fortress, placed camps
at strategic points, and constructed twenty-three block-houses. He dug
a trench twenty feet deep around the place, and back of this began his
other siege works. These included two parallel trenches fifteen feet
broad and fifteen feet deep. Behind these he built a palisade twelve
feet high, and to this he added a breastwork of pointed stakes; while
at intervals of eighty feet he constructed turrets. In addition, he
had branches cut from trees and sharpened on the ends; and these he
fastened at the bottom of the trenches, so that the points projected
just above the ground. In front of these he dug shallow pits, into
which tapering stakes hardened in the fire were driven, projecting
four inches above the ground. These pits were hidden with twigs and
brushwood. Eight rows of these pits were dug, three feet apart; and
in front of all stakes with iron hooks were buried in the ground at
irregular intervals. When all this had been done on the side toward the
fortress, Cæsar constructed parallel entrenchments of the same kind, to
protect his rear; the two sets being so arranged with respect to each
other that the same men could man both. Having constructed all these
material appliances, he instituted a comprehensive system of drills, so
that his men would know exactly how to utilize them under all probable
contingencies.
In the battle that followed the barbarians showed their wonted courage
and dash; but an unexpected situation arose when Cæsar attacked a
separated part in their rear. Then they were seized with panic, and the
natural rout and disaster followed.
This battle decided the fate of Gaul; though its actual subduing,
especially in the southwestern part was not accomplished immediately.
The last major act was taking a strong fortress. This was accomplished
by cutting a tunnel, by which the spring was tapped that supplied
the garrison with water. As Vercingetorix said, the Romans won their
victories, not by superior courage, but by superior science.
Cæsar's later passage across the Rubicon, the flight of the Senate,
and his later operations by land and sea against Marseilles (Massilia)
and hostile forces in northern Spain, are well known, and were
characterized by the same high order of inventiveness. His later
operations against Pompey, and later still against Pharnaces and
Scipio, were conducted under conditions that gave him less opportunity
to utilize the quality of inventiveness in such clear ways; but they
were marked with the kindred qualities of foresight, skilful adaptation
of means to ends, and presence of mind in emergencies.
In the minds of some, Cæsar's greatest influence on history has been
due to his improvement of the Calendar, and especially his reforms of
the public morals and the laws of Rome, after his campaign against
Pharnaces. This subject has been the theme of jurists and scholars to
such a degree that it might seem presumptuous in a navy officer to
do more than mention it. At the same time it may be pointed out that
Cæsar's work was not in any matters of detail, or in contributing any
legal or juridical skill or knowledge, but in conceiving the idea of
creating the _Leges Juliæ_, and then creating them.
Julius Cæsar was murdered in the year 44 B. C. He was followed in power
by his grandnephew Octavius, one of the most fortunate occurrences in
history; for Octavius possessed the ability and the character to carry
on the constructive work that Julius Cæsar had begun. Under Octavius
and his successors, the Roman Empire became increasingly large and
strong, until the reign of Trajan in the second century, A. D., when it
acquired its greatest territorial extent.
During the time when Rome was increasing in extent and power, the
wealth of cities and of individuals increased also, and enormous public
works of all kinds were constructed, many of which are still the
admiration of the world. Material prosperity reached its highest point.
But the creative period had passed. Youth, with its dreams and vigor
of doing had gone, and maturity, with the luxury of prosperity and
the consequent dulling of the imagination, had assumed its place.
Senescence followed in due course. Then the empire was divided into
two parts, the Empire of the West and the Empire of the East. Finally,
in 476 A. D., Rome died and with it the Empire of the West.
[Illustration: Triumphal Procession from the Arch of Titus]
But the Eastern Empire stood, and Constantinople was its capital. And
it stood, alone and unassisted, as the sole bulwark of Christianity and
civilization for nearly 1000 years, until it finally fell before the
Ottoman Turks in 1543. It could not have done this, if in the latter
part of the seventh century when it was beleaguered by a Turkish fleet,
much greater than its own, it had not suddenly received unexpected
aid in the shape of a new invention. This was "Greek fire," which
seems to have been a pasty mixture of sulphur, nitre, pitch, and other
substances, which when squirted against wood set it on fire with a
flame that water could not quench. In the very first attack, the Turks
were so demoralized by the Greek fire that they fled in panic. They
never learned the secret and were never able to stand up against it.
On one occasion, fifteen Christian ships, using Greek fire, actually
put to rout a Turkish fleet numbering several hundred.
* * * * *
During all the countless centuries before the dawn of recorded history,
and during the approximately forty centuries that elapsed from the
beginning of recorded history until the fall of Rome, we have observed
the coming of many inventions of both material and immaterial kinds,
and noted the influence of those inventions in causing civilization,
and therefore in directing the line that history has followed.
It may be objected that a perfectly natural inference from what has
been written would be that the only thing which had influenced the
direction of movement of history was invention. To this, the answer
may very reasonably be made that this book does not pretend to be a
history, or to point out what have been the greatest factors that
have influenced its line of movement; it attempts merely to emphasize
the influence of one factor, invention, and to suggest that maybe its
influence has not hitherto been estimated at its proper value.
Another objection like that just indicated might be made to the effect
that all the progress of the world up to the fall of Rome is attributed
in this book to inventors only; that all the work of statesmen,
scientists, generals, admirals, explorers, jurists, men of business,
etc., etc., is ignored.
Such an objection would be natural and reasonable; but to it an answer
like the previous one may be made, to the effect that the purpose of
this book is not to compare the benefits conferred by any one class of
men with those conferred by any other, but merely to point out, in a
very general way, what inventors have done.
Nevertheless, it does seem clear that inventors did more to map out
the direction of the progress just traced than any other single class
of men. If we will fix our attention on any one invention about which
we know enough--say, the water-clock--we can see that the original
inventor of the water-clock (no matter who he was) had more influence
on the history of the clock than any other man has had; and that the
inventors of clocks who followed him had more influence on the clock
than any other equal number of men had. This does not mean that the
men who risked their money in making novel clocks did not influence
the history of the clock materially; and it does not mean that the men
who made good materials for them did not influence the history of the
clock greatly; and it does not mean that the engineers and mechanics
who operated them successfully did not influence its history. It would
be absurd to pretend that each one of these men did not influence
the history of the clock; for without them there would have been no
successful clock. Nevertheless, in the nature of things, the original
inventors must be credited with influencing the history of the clock
more than any other equal number of men did, just as a father must
be credited with influencing the history of his children more than
any other man can, from the mere fact of his having caused them to be
born. The inventors of clocks were the fathers of the clocks that they
invented, and also the forefathers of all the inventions that proceed
directly or indirectly from them.
What has been said about the clock applies with equal force to every
other invented thing. Therefore, it can hardly be gainsaid that, so
far as invented things are concerned, their inventors have had more
influence on the history that has resulted from them than any other men
have had.
If anyone will glance through any book of ancient history, he will
realize that it is mainly a record of wars; the political changes
caused by wars, or rendered possible by their means; the growth of
nations and other organizations; the invention of certain mechanisms,
arts and sciences; and the construction of certain structures such
as temples, palaces and ships. All these agencies influenced ancient
history, of course; but it is clear that the agency that influenced it
the most obviously and immediately was the wars.
Yet let us remind ourselves that the real effect on history of any war
was not exerted by the war itself, so much as by the result of the war.
Let us also remind ourselves that the result of any war was because of
the material forces engaged and the skill with which they were handled.
Now the material forces put onto the field of battle on each side
in any of the wars were the product of the material resources of
the country, of its wealth, its ability to manufacture weapons
and transport troops; that is, of its utilization of invented
mechanisms, processes and methods. The skill with which they were
handled--(especially when supreme skill was exerted, as in the cases of
Alexander and Cæsar)--was the outcome not of mere laborious training,
not of mere knowledge, or courage, or carefully detailed arrangement,
but of plans so conceived, developed and produced (invented) as to
confront the enemy with unexpected situations that they were not
prepared to meet. So the influence of even the wars seems to have been
due fundamentally to invention.
As to the other agencies that influenced the course of ancient history,
they seem to owe their influence even more obviously to invention than
war does. Every department of ancient civilization seems traceable back
to some invention or inventions. The whole of ancient civilization
seems to rest primarily on inventions.
As inventions were made by inventors, we seem forced to the conclusion
that inventors influenced ancient history more than any other one class
did. This does not mean that the inventor of a child's toy influenced
history more than did any one of the millions of wise and good men in
each generation who helped to keep the machine of civilization working
smoothly; for it refers to inventors as a class, and not to inventors
as individuals.
CHAPTER V
THE INVENTION OF THE GUN AND OF PRINTING
The period from the fall of Rome to the beginning of the fourteenth
century was almost destitute in the matter of inventions that can be
distinctly named: though the conception and carrying into effect of
Mohammedanism in the seventh century, the campaigns and governmental
systems of Charlemagne in the ninth century, the invasion of England by
William of Normandy in the eleventh century, and the Crusades in the
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well as all the numerous
wars and campaigns that succeeded each other so rapidly, indicate a
mental and nervous restlessness which sought relief in action, and
which received guidance in seeking that relief from the suggestions of
invention.
During the interval, paper is supposed by some to have been invented,
or at least the art of making it from rags. Paper itself, however, had
been invented long before in China.
The early part of the twelfth century opened a new era in Europe with
the introduction of one of the most important inventions ever made, the
gun. It is often said that gunpowder was invented then. Gunpowder, of
course, had been invented or discovered many centuries before.
There is much obscurity about the invention of gunpowder. It is usually
supposed to have been invented in China, and to have crept its way
first to the western Asian nations, and afterwards to Europe by way
of the Mediterranean. There can be little doubt that gunpowder was
known to the Romans in the days of the empire; and some accounts of
Alexander's campaigns declare that he used mines to destroy the walls
of Gaza.
It is supposed by many that the Chinese had cannon, from certain
embrasures in some of their ancient walls; but there seems to be no
absolute proof of this. It seems fairly well established that the Moors
used artillery in Spain in the twelfth century; though some writers
hold that what were called firearms in Europe before the fourteenth
century were only engines which threw fire into besieged places.
It seems probable that the gun was invented as the result of an
accident that occurred while some man was pounding the (gunpowder)
mixture of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur in a receptacle of some
kind. According to one story, the mixture exploded and threw the pestle
violently out of the mortar. From this incident, the man who was
handling the pestle, or a bystander, is supposed to have conceived the
idea that the powder could be used intentionally to throw projectiles,
and he is supposed also to have actually proved that it could be done
at will, and to have produced a concrete appliance for doing it. From
the history of the case, it would seem that the first gun was what we
still call a "mortar."
It may occur to some that (conceding the story to be true, which it
possibly is, in essentials) the gun was not an invention so much as a
discovery. It may be pointed out, however, that while the fact that
gunpowder would blow a pestle out of a mortar might be truly called
a discovery, yet the conception of utilizing the discovery by making
a weapon, and the subsequent making of the weapon constituted an
invention of the most clean-cut kind.
Let us realize the extreme improbability that the phenomenon of the
expulsive force of gunpowder was then noted for the first time. It
seems probable that accidental ignition of the mixture had often
occurred before, and missiles hurled in all directions in consequence.
But, as happens in the vast majority of all incidents, no one imagined
any possible utilization of the facts disclosed by the incident; and
if the man who invented the gun, after witnessing the expulsion of the
pestle from the mortar, had not been endowed with both imagination
and constructiveness, he would have treated it as most of us treat
an incident--merely as an incident. But the imagination of this man
must at once have conceived a picture of what we now call a mortar,
which should be designed and constructed so that projectiles could
be expelled from it at will, in whatever direction the mortar were
pointing; and then his constructive faculty must have taken up the task
that imagination had suggested, and developed the conception into a
concrete thing.
Into the long, elaborate and exciting history of the development of
the gun, that has been carried on with enormous energy ever since, it
is not necessary at this point to enter. Since the sixteenth century,
its history is accurately known, and many large books are filled with
descriptions and diagrams and mathematical tables and formulæ that
recount its progress in detail; while the histories of all the nations
blaze with stories of the battles in which guns have been employed.
Of all the inventions ever made, it is doubtful if the development
and improvement of any other has enlisted the services of a greater
number of men and of more important men, than the gun. It is more than
doubtful if a greater amount of money has been expended on any other
invention, if a greater number of experiments have been made, or if
more mental and physical energy has been expended. Certain it is
that no other invention has had so direct and powerful an effect on
human beings; for the number of men it has killed and wounded must be
expressed in terms of millions.
This phase of the influence of the gun on history is clearly marked.
Not so clearly marked, but really more important, has been its
influence in deciding wars; for the ways in which wars have been
decided have been the turning points in the march of history. The issue
of Alexander's wars, for instance, had decided that Greek civilization
should not perish, but survive; the issue of Cæsar's wars in Gaul had
decided that Roman civilization should extend north over Europe, and
that the western incursion of the savage Germans should be stopped; the
issue of the wars between the vigorous Goths and degenerate Rome had
decided that Rome must die; and so forth, and so forth. So, after the
invention of the gun, the issue of every succeeding war supplied a new
turning point for history to follow. Naturally, those nations that took
the most skilful, prompt and thorough advantage of the power, range and
accuracy of the new invention gained in almost every case the victory
over their opponents.
So long as no weapons existed, struggles between men had to be
decided by physical strength and cunning and quickness only. When the
first flint fist-hammer was invented, a man who was sagacious enough
and industrious enough and skilful enough to make one, could gain
the victory over many another man of greater physical strength and
quickness, but who had not the sagacity, industry and skill to provide
himself with a flint fist-hammer.
Supposing the flint fist-hammer to be the first invention ever made,
as many think it was, we see here the first instance of the influence
of invention on history; because this first invention influenced the
course of history in favor of men possessing sagacity, industry and
skill, as against men not possessing those qualities. By doing this, it
not only decided that such men (and tribes composed of such men) should
prevail, but did even more to influence history; _it induced men and
tribes to make and develop and utilize inventions_. This resulted in
what we call civilization.
As each improved weapon followed its predecessor, a new demand was
made;--not only for a new kind of skill on the part of the man making
the weapon and on the part of the soldiers using it, but also for
foresight on the part of the tribe or nation that would supply the
weapon to its troops. It is easily realized that, if there were two
contiguous tribes about to go to war against each other, one of which
was ruled by a sagacious, energetic and far-seeing chief, while the
other was ruled by a dull, slothful and short-sighted chief, the former
chief would probably provide his warriors with the newest weapon (say,
the bow and arrow) and train them in its use; whereas the other would
ignore it and go to battle with clubs and javelins only. As between
two tribes otherwise equally matched, the result would be obvious; and
doubtless it was exceedingly obvious in hundreds of tribal battles,
before the dawn of history.
It is a characteristic of evolution, as has been pointed out by wise
men, that complexity eventually evolves from simplicity. In no one
department of man's endeavor does this truth stand out more clearly
than in the evolution of weapons. For the oldest weapon that we know of
was probably a stone, or a stick used as a club; and each succeeding
weapon has been more complicated than its predecessor,--needing
additional parts with which to secure the additional results achieved.
This increased complexity has entailed increased liability to
derangement, because the failure of any one part has entailed the
failure or the decreased effectiveness of the weapon as a whole. This
increased liability to derangement has entailed a demand for not only
increased care and skill in fabricating the weapon, but for increased
knowledge, diligence and skill in caring for it, and using it.
The superiority of the gun over all previously existing weapons was
quickly recognized, and every civilized nation soon adopted it as
its major implement of war. As the gun was a piece of mechanism, it
possessed the attribute which seems to give to pieces of mechanism an
element of superiority over every other thing in the universe, the
attribute of continual improvability. Human beings do not possess this
attribute, nor does any other thing in nature, so far as we know. Every
human being begins where his father did--and so does everything else
on the earth; though human invention has recently made it possible for
certain plants to be improved. No new invention ever dies as a man
does, even if the material parts or immaterial parts that compose it
are destroyed. On the contrary, it lives, in the sense that it exists
as a definite usable entity, and also in the sense that it continues to
propagate. And the things that it propagates do not begin as helpless
and useless babies, but as mature creations. The first completed gun is
still the model for the guns that men make now, and will continue to be
the model for all guns in the future. The man who made the first gun
has been succeeded by other men, as the first gun has been succeeded by
other guns; but the human successors have been no improvement on the
inventor of the first gun, while the guns that have succeeded the first
gun have been improvements on it to a degree that it is difficult--in
fact, impossible, to realize.
The relations of the gun to civilization are reciprocal, and are
therefore in accord with most of the other phenomena of our lives; for
just as the gun furthered the improvement of civilization, civilization
furthered the improvement of the gun. Nearly every step taken in the
physical sciences, and afterward in engineering and general mechanics,
has had a direct effect in improving the gun. The gun began as an
exceedingly rough, awkward and crude appliance; the gun today is one
of the most highly specialized and perfect appliances that the world
possesses.
But it is not only the gun itself that has been improved; the powder
has also been improved, and to a degree almost equal, if not quite.
When we realize that modern gunnery is so exact that if a gun is fired
in any direction and at any angle of elevation, the projectiles will
fall so close to a designated spot that all considerable variations
in the points of fall from that spot are usually attributed to other
causes than imperfection in the powder; and if we realize also that
a variation of one per cent. in the initial velocity imparted to a
projectile by its powder would result in a variation (practically
speaking) of one per cent. in the range attained, we then may realize
how perfectly understood the laws of the combustion of powder and the
development of powder gas have become, and how perfect are the methods
of manufacturing, storing and using it. Books upon books have been
written on the subject of making and using gunpowder; and as high a
grade of experimental ability has been employed as on the development
of any other art.
It is not quite clear whether stationary cannon or small guns carried
by soldiers were the first to be used; but the probability seems to be
that cannon were the first. It soon became desirable to devise and to
make appliances for holding the cannon in position, elevating them to
predetermined angles, and transporting them from place to place. To
accomplish these things, gun-carriages were invented. These appliances
have kept pace with guns and gunpowder in the march of improvement;
countless minor inventions have been made; countless experiments
have been conducted; countless books and articles have been written;
countless millions of money have been expended. That the field has
been large can readily be realized, when we remind ourselves of the
numberless situations that gun-carriages have had to be adapted to, on
the level plains of Central Europe, in the mountains, on the sands of
the desert,--in cold and heat and wet; and on the ocean also, in small
vessels and great battleships, to handle cannon great and small, on the
uneasy surface of the sea. But it will not be enough for us to realize
that it has been necessary to construct gun-carriages so ingeniously
that guns can be handled on them under all these circumstances; for we
will fall short of a realization of what must be attained, unless we
realize that the guns must be handled with safety, and (which is more
difficult of attainment) with precision and yet with quickness.
Now to bring the gun and its accessories to the high standard they have
now reached, the resources of virtually all the physical sciences have
been required and utilized; so that, while modern civilization was made
possible by the gun, and could not have been made possible without it,
the modern gun has been made possible by civilization, and could not
have been made possible without it.
This mutuality between civilization and the gun is evident in the
relations between civilization and every other great invention. It is
very clearly evident in the case of material mechanism; for it has been
plainly impossible for any material invention to exist without directly
and indirectly contributing to the improvement, and even to the birth,
of others. Any improvement in the process of making any metal or any
compound has always been of assistance to every mechanism using that
metal or that compound; and it seems impossible to name any mechanism
or process whose invention has not helped some other mechanism or
process. In the matter of the invention of immaterial things, the
effect may not be quite so obvious; and yet it is plain that most of
those inventions have contributed to the safety, intelligence and
stabilization of peoples, and therefore to a condition of mentality and
of tranquillity that permitted and often encouraged the improvement of
existing appliances, and the invention of new ones. Of one class of
immaterial invention, such as new books on the physical and engineering
sciences, the influence on material inventions is, of course, as
obvious as it is profound.
The boom of the gun may be said, by a not forced figure of speech, to
have ushered in the new civilization that rose from the mental lethargy
of the Middle Ages; for it was the first great invention of all in the
long line that have followed since. As it was the first, and because
without it the others would have been impossible, we can hardly avoid
the conclusion that it was the most important.
The mutual reactions between the gun and civilization have resulted,
and are still resulting, in widening the distance between the civilized
and the uncivilized, placing more and more power in the hands of the
civilized, and putting the uncivilized more and more into subjection
by the civilized. The process that began with the invention of the
fist-hammer, and was continued through the centuries by all the
improvements in weapons that followed, was brought to a halt when
Rome fell, and not revived until the gun came into general use in the
fourteenth century. During the interval of nearly nine hundred years,
civilization indeed went backward with the advance of the barbarians
into Europe, checked but not wholly stopped by Charles Martel at the
Battle of Tours in 732, and later by Charlemagne, his grandson, in
numerous campaigns. But the gun, being adopted and improved by peoples
having the mentality needed to discern its usefulness, stabilized the
conditions of living afterward by keeping in check the barbarians,
especially east of Europe. Its greatest single usefulness followed from
this by making possible the development and utilization of the next
great invention. This invention was next to the gun in point of time.
It was next to the gun in influence on history also; and some people
think it has had even more influence than the gun. This invention is
usually called the invention of printing.
Of course, printing had been invented centuries before, probably in
China, and had been practiced during all the intervening centuries,
in China, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Rome, the Hellenistic
countries and Italy. But the printing had been done from blocks on
which were cut or carved many characters, that expressed whole words or
sentences. Naturally, printing done from them was not adaptable to the
recording of discussions, the making of connected narratives, or the
publishing of books.
Suddenly, about the year 1434, John Gutenberg, who lives at Mayence,
conceives the idea of cutting only one letter on each block, putting
the blocks in forms so arranged that the blocks can be put in such
sequence as may be desired for spelling words, and all the blocks
secured firmly in position. In other words, he invented movable type.
Objection may be made to this statement, and the declaration urged that
movable type were used in China before the Christian era. Possibly
they were; some declarations have been made to that effect. But
even if they were, we cannot see that their invention there had any
considerable influence on history. China was separated from western
Asia and from Africa and Europe by the long stretch of the dry lands
of Central Asia, across which little communication passed. It is
more nearly certain than most things are in ancient history, that
the civilized peoples of western Asia, Africa and Europe, including
Gutenberg himself, did not know of movable type until Gutenberg
invented them.
It is absolutely certain that virtually the whole of the influence
that printing by movable type has exercised on history sprang from the
invention of Gutenberg. It started almost immediately; and it increased
with a rapidity and a certainty that are amazing. No invention made
before, not even the gun, was seized upon with such avidity. The
world wanted it. The world seemed to have been waiting for it, though
unconsciously.
It may be well at this point to impress upon our minds the fact that
no invention has ever been recognized as an invention, unless it has
been put into a concrete form. The U. S. Patent Office, for instance,
will not award a patent for any invention unless it is described and
illustrated so clearly that "any one skilled in the art can make and
use it." It is an axiom that a man "cannot patent an idea." In many
countries a patentee is required to "work" his invention, to make
apparatus embodying it, and to put the apparatus to use. The underlying
idea of the patent laws of all countries is that the good of the public
is the end in view, and not the good of the inventor; that rewards
are held out to the inventor, merely to induce him to put devices of
practical value into the hands of the people. From this point of view,
which seems to be the correct one, the mere fact that a man conceives
of a device, even if he afterward develops his device to the degree
that he illustrates it and describes it to someone in such a way that a
person skilled in the art can make and use it, does not entitle him to
any reward. He must use "due diligence" in communicating full knowledge
of his invention to the public, through the Patent Office, ask for a
patent, and pay to the Government the prescribed fee.
Now, Gutenberg "worked" his invention so energetically that, with the
assistance of Faust, Schaeffer and others, an exceedingly efficient
system of printing books was in practical operation as early as 1455.
The types were of metal, and were cast from a matrix that had been
stamped out by a steel punch, and could therefore be so accurately
fashioned that the type had a beautiful sharpness and finish. In
addition, certain mechanical apparatus of a simple kind (printing
presses) were invented, whereby the type could be satisfactorily
handled, and impressions could be taken from them with accuracy and
quickness.
News of the invention spread so rapidly that before the year 1500
printing presses were at work in every country of Europe. The first
books printed were, of course, the works of the ancient authors,
beginning with three editions of Donatus. These were multiplied in
great numbers, and gave the first effective impulse to the spread of
civilization from the Græco-Oriental countries, where it had been
sleeping, to the hungry intellects of Europe.
The new birth of civilization (usually called the Renaissance) began
in Italy, where civilization had never quite died out, at some time
during the fourteenth century, and took the form at first of the
study of classical literature. This led naturally to a search for old
manuscripts; and so ardent did this search become that the libraries
of cathedrals and monasteries in all the civilized countries were
ransacked. Many new libraries were founded, especially in Italy, to
hold the old manuscripts that were discovered. A great impetus was
given to the movement by the exodus of scholars from Constantinople,
and their migration west to Italy, during the half century between the
year 1400 and the fall of Constantinople before the Ottoman Turks in
1453.
[Illustration: The Printing of Books]
Therefore, when the news of the invention of Gutenberg reached
the scholars of Italy and other lands, they seized upon it as an
undreamed-of blessing for bringing about that widespread study of
the classical authors which they had been struggling under so many
difficulties to accomplish.
To narrate and describe the progress made since then in the art of
printing would be to rewrite what has been written from time to time in
books and magazines and papers. To describe and point out the other
arts that have sprung directly from the art of printing, such as the
manufacture of printing presses and allied machinery, would require an
enormous book of a wholly technical nature; to describe and point out
the arts that have been made necessary, and the arts that have been
made possible, by the invention of printing would entail a history of
most of the industrial arts of the present day; while to mention and
adequately describe the measures that have resulted from the invention
of printing, and those made necessary and possible by it, would entail
a history of all the civilization that has come into being since
printing was invented.
The effects of the invention of printing are most of them so obvious
that it would be unnecessary to call attention to them. No other
one art seems to be so directly and clearly to be credited with the
progress of civilization. In the minds of many people, perhaps of most
people, printing is considered the most important invention ever made.
Maybe it is; but let us remind ourselves that the gun came before
the printing-press, and that the civilization contributed to by the
printing press would not have been possible without the gun. It may be
answered that, nevertheless, the printing press contributed more than
the gun; in the same way that a bank contributes more to the welfare of
a city than does the policeman who guards the bank.
Such an argument would have much to commend it, and it may be based
on the correct view of the situation. But to the author, the gun
seems to constitute the foundation of modern civilization, and the
printing press to be part of the structure built upon it; for the
fundamental enemy to civilization has always been the barbarian, be
he a savage under Attila or a Bolshevik in New York. It is true that
civilization may be considered as more important than the means that
makes it possible, but even this seems to be discussible; but that the
gun constitutes more distinctly the preservative influence of modern
civilization than any other one thing constitutes civilization itself
seems hardly to be discussible. The whole system of defense of all the
nations against foes outside and anarchy inside has rested on the gun
ever since it was invented;
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