Time of the Great Invention.--A First Gift.--The Use of the
Alphabet.--A New Era.--Royal Printers.--Knights of Type and
Pen.--A Mighty Engine.--Gutenberg’s Dream.--The Press mighty.
If the “undevout astronomer is mad,” what shall be thought of the
unbelieving observer of God’s dealings with the human race? If
evidences of infinite design appear in the material bodies that people
space, can we think that God has stamped his creating, ordering hand
less distinctly on the affairs connected with the progress of the
souls for whom all things exist? The needle pointing to the pole
helps on navigation; it is the servant of the seamen: without it,
what would commerce do? But how happened it that the principle of the
mariner’s compass was discovered just when in the turmoil of events
it would be most useful--when it could suitably and most effectively
introduce the old to the new world? How providential, too, the time of
the invention of the art of printing! Had it been much earlier, the
materials for writing were so scarce that it must have come to naught.
Had it been deferred, doubtless many works which we prize as among
the most valuable and excellent would have been lost. In less than a
half-century from the invention of the wonderful art, the continent of
America was discovered by Columbus, in 1492. In less then a century,
Copernicus discovered the true theory of the planetary motions; and,
shortly after, only a few years intervening, he was succeeded by the
three great heralds of Newton,--Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.
Man is above nature. The senses only, do not constitute man; for
the brutes have some senses like us, and, not seldom, stronger,
more delicate, more subtile, quicker to act, more infallible. It is
_thought_, then, that gives man the preëminence. But what if thought
could never be expressed? What if the members of the human race could
never discover thought to each other, never reveal what passed within
the mysterious and mighty laboratory of the mind only as the infant
seeks to make its wants known, by gestures and moans and “inarticulate
cries?” But the Creator gave man speech; God’s first grand
interposition for the soul was the gift of speech! “We believe,” says
a brilliant French writer, “that speech was not born of itself on the
lips of primitive man,” as some affirm, “like a stammering of chance,
attaching, from age to age, certain vague significations to certain
inarticulated sounds, and giving to others, by the sound and connection
of these human cries, lessons which he who uttered them had not himself
received. To reach thence from these instinctive cries to speech; from
speech to the unanimous agreement of the meaning of words--of the sense
of certain words to the verb and phrase--of the verb and phrase to
logical syntax--of this syntax to the language of Moses, David, Cicero,
Confucius, Racine, it is necessary to suppose more ages of existence
to the human race on this earthly globe than there are stars, visible
and invisible, in the Milky Way. It is necessary to suppose numberless
ages of stupidity during which the human race, essentially moral and
intellectual, should vainly search, like the brutes, its _instrument_
of morality and knowledge, without power to find it only after myriads
of generations. Humanity deaf and mute during a hundred thousand years!
I shudder at the blasphemy of believing such a mystery. I love better
to believe in the other; that is to say, in the fatherly mystery of the
Creator himself, inspiring on the lips of his infant creature, speech;
the word, the sentence, the inborn expression, which at sight gave
things names appropriate to their form and nature.”
And when we consider how necessary the use of language is to the
convenience, comfort, and progress of man, and that man had at once
conferred upon him a body “curiously and wonderfully made,” and a mind
capacious, active, strong, and penetrating, can we harbor the idea that
after his creation, God left him,--a perfect, full-grown being, the
noblest of his works, and the lord of nature,--without speech? Rather
must we not infer, with a distinguished writer, that “the same Divine
Author of the physical organs of speech imparted to man the knowledge
of their use and power”?
But speech carries thought from the mouth to the ear by sound, and then
perishes like the medium which conveyed it there. There needed to be,
therefore, a process to _preserve_ thought, by reducing it to material
signs on some enduring substance. So writing was given to the world.
And the wonderful discovery of alphabetical writing, how did it come
about? By chance? by human ingenuity? or through the “fatherly mystery
of the Creator inspiring it” in man? Says the learned Shackford, “That
men should immediately fall on such a project, to express sounds by
letters, and expose to sight all that may be said or thought in about
twenty characters variously placed, exceeds the highest notions we can
have of the capacities with which we are endowed.” How difficult to
submit our reason to the theories which have been argued of a _gradual_
construction of alphabetical letters! Is it reasonable to suppose, for
example, that the old Shemitish letter D was suggested by the word
_door_, or the letter H by the word _fence_, and the V by a _hook_ or
_nail_? Do we not find evidence, that alphabetical writing was divinely
revealed, in the tables of stone written by the finger of God and
given to Moses on the Mount? In those ten commandments so anciently
bestowed, all the Hebrew letters, with one exception, are found--every
guttural, labial, lingual, and dental is disclosed. Some quote the
Chinese as leading the way in imprinting language. But their writing
was hieroglyphical, they did not reach alphabetical writing, and they
use one hundred and twenty thousand characters to express thought.
But whether writing, which has well been spoken of as “nearly divine,”
is the invention of man, or is truly divine in its origin, its
possession was a great step in human progress. By it speech became
enduring and universal; it could be preserved, it could be diffused.
Poetry, history, science, law, art, religion, thus found expression
for all time. Through it we commune with the thinkers of antiquity.
By its aid “the Book” has come down to us. Nevertheless, this mode of
transmitting knowledge was slow, toilsome, costly, and not available
to the masses. At the beginning of the eleventh century, for example,
books were so scarce in Spain that one and the same copy of the Bible,
St. Jerome’s Epistles, and some volumes of ecclesiastical offices,
served several different monasteries. Books were the privilege of the
wealthy and the powerful; and the common people had them not. “The
head of society was in the light, the feet in the shade,” and “the
progress of truth, science, letters, politics, arts, was slow, and
suspended through long periods.” Some process was needed by which the
written thoughts of the thinkers could be reproduced with greater
rapidity, and thus placed within the reach even of the poor. This,
John Gutenberg, in the good providence of God, gave mankind, in the
discovery of printing. With the new art came a new era for the world.
In a few years after Gutenberg’s death all the capitals of Europe had
their printing-presses. France, England, Holland, Germany, Venice,
Genoa, Rome, Poland, seized the invention, and spread abroad religious
and secular works. In 1500 the Jews published tracts on Rabbinical
literature in Constantinople. And Russia, in 1680, established a press
in Moscow.
The invention had its enemies, and printing its martyrs; but its glory
could not be dimmed, nor its progress arrested. Kings and queens turned
engravers and compositors, glorying to labor with their own hands in
the wonderful art. The wife of Henry IV. designed and printed cuts for
some royal publications, and engraving with her own hand a figure of
a young girl, presented it to “Philip de Champagne.” Louis XV. in his
youth, printed in his own palace a “Treatise on European Geography.”
The chief printers of the times succeeding that of Gutenberg were often
the artists, the learned men, the writers. They not only reproduced the
buried works of antiquity, but were able to explain and interpret them.
The Emperor Maximilian ennobled the printers and compositors of the new
art, authorizing them to wear robes braided with gold and silver, such
as the nobility only had the right to wear, and giving them, for a coat
of arms, an eagle with wings extended on the globe, symbol of free and
rapid flight and universal conquest. Deserved honor! fitting symbol!
What marvels has printing wrought. It has given elementary instruction
to the masses,--putting into every hand, however humble or toilworn,
the printed page, multiplying books to teach, amuse, and elevate even
the little child. It has reformed corrupt religions, fashioned and
developed philosophy anew, and permeated laws with their true spirit.
Before its magic touch, the old feudal despotisms of the dark ages
have fallen, and later and no less oppressive systems have wasted
away. By its aid time and space seem annihilated, as “railways open to
it routes, steam lends to it wings, and the electric telegraph gives
it the instantaneousness of powder!” The “preserver of all arts,” it
broods over and perpetuates all useful institutions and discoveries;
and trade and commerce are stimulated, guided, systematized, enlarged,
and furnished with boundless facilities. But this mighty engine can be
used for evil as well as for good, and strike like the thunder-bolt
the best interests of man. The poet-historian from whom we have before
quoted, illustrates this by a dream of Gutenberg’s, which he is said
to have related to his friends, and to have been translated from the
German, at Strasbourg, by Mr. Garaud.
Gutenberg had succeeded in an important experiment. His success filled
him with such enthusiasm that he scarcely slept the night following.
In his troubled and imperfect rest he had his dream,--a dream so
prophetic, and so near to the truth, that one questions, in reading
it, if it be not the reflecting presentiment of a wakeful sage rather
than the fevered dream of a slumbering artisan. This is the account
or legend of this dream as it is preserved in the library of the
counsellor Aulique Beck:--
“In a cell of a cloister of Arbogast sits a man with a wan forehead, a
long beard, and fixed look, before a table, supporting his head with
his hand. Suddenly he passes his fingers through his beard with a quick
joyous movement--the hermit of the cell has discovered a solution of
the problem he sought! He rises and utters a cry; it was as a relief
to a long pent-up thought. He hastily turns to his trunk, opens it,
and takes therefrom a cutting instrument; then, with nervous jerking
movements, he sets himself to carve a small piece of wood. In all
these movements there was joy and anxiety, as if he feared that his
idea would escape,--the diamond he had found, and which he wished to
set and polish for posterity. Gutenberg cut roughly and with feverish
activity, his brow covered with drops of sweat, while his eyes followed
with ardor the progress of his work. He wrought thus a great while,
but the time seemed short. At length, he dipped the wood in a black
liquid, placed it on parchment, and bearing the weight of his body on
his hand in the manner of a press, he printed the first letter which he
had cut, in relief. He contemplated the result, and a second cry, full
of the ecstasy of satisfied genius, burst from his lips; then he closed
his eyes with an air of happiness such as would befit the saints in
paradise, and fell exhausted on a joint-stool; when overcome of sleep,
he murmured, ‘I am immortal!’
“Then he had a dream which troubled him. ‘I heard two voices,’ said
he, in relating it; ‘two unknown and of a different sound, which
spoke alternately in my soul. One said to me, “Rejoice, John; thou
art immortal! Henceforth, light shall be spread by thee throughout
the world. People who dwell a thousand leagues from thee, strangers
to the thoughts of our country, shall read and comprehend all the
ideas now mute,--spread and multiplied as the reverberations of the
thunder, by thee, by thy work. Rejoice, thou art immortal! for thou
art the interpreter whom the nations await that they may converse
together. Thou art immortal; for thy discovery comes to give perpetual
life to the genius which would be still-born without thee, and who,
by acknowledgment, shall all make known in their turn the immortality
of him who immortalized them!” The voice ceased, and left me in the
delirium of glory. But I heard another voice. It said to me, “Yes,
John, thou art immortal. But at what a price? Thought not unlike thine,
is it always pure and holy enough to be worthy of being delivered
to the ears and eyes of the human race? Are there not many--the
greater number it may be--which merit rather a thousand times to be
annihilated, and sink to oblivion, than to be repeated and multiplied
in the world? Man is oftener perverse than wise and good; he will
profane the gift that you make him; he will abuse the new faculty that
you create for him. More of the world, in place of blessing, will
curse thee. Some men will be born with souls powerful and seductive,
and hearts proud and corrupt. Without thee, they would rest in the
shade; shut in a narrow circle, they would be known only to their
associates, and during their lives. By thee, they will bear folly,
mischief, and crime to all men and all ages. See thousands corrupted
with the disease of one! See young men depraved by books whose pages
distill soul-poison! See young women become immodest, false, and hard
to the poor, by books which have poisoned their hearts! See mothers
mourning their sons! See fathers blushing for their daughters! Is
not immortality too dear which costs so many tears and such anguish?
Dost thou desire glory at such a price? Art thou not appalled at the
responsibility with which this glory will weigh down thy soul? Listen
to me, John: live as if thou hadst discovered nothing. Regard thy
invention as a seductive but fatal dream, whose execution would be
useful and holy, if only man was good. But man is evil. And in lending
arms to the evil, art thou not a participator in his crimes?”
“‘I awoke in a horror of doubt! I hesitated an instant; but I
considered that the gifts of God, though they were sometimes very
perilous, were never bad, and that to give an instrument to aid
reason, and advance human liberty, was to give a vaster field to
intelligence and to virtue,--both divine. I pursued the execution of my
discovery.’”
Thus has the art of printing come down to us consecrated by the martyr
struggles of a heroic soul. He died poor, able only to leave a few
books to his loving sister, yet enriching all mankind by the fruits of
his genius. “I bequeath to my sister,” said he in his will, “all the
books printed by me in Strasbourg.”
But which of the voices that the legend represents as speaking to
Gutenberg in his dream, shall prove a true prophet of the art? Shall
its resistless power blast the world with error and crime, or bless
the ages with truth and purity? “The first cries of the press,” says a
historian, “were praise and prayer.” Let its utterances be for religion
and learning, God and humanity; then welcome the hour when the earth
shall be covered with its swiftly multiplying issues, “the leaves of
the tree which are for the healing of the nations.”