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.