Invention: The Master-key to Progress

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.

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; whereas, not even the printing press can be said to be the only element, or even the main element, in modern civilization.

This brief discussion is perhaps not very important; but it does not wholly lack importance, for the reason that it brings into clear relief the fact that we cannot reasonably discuss civilization without realizing the dangers that confront it, and have always confronted it, and will continue to confront it. Civilization is an artificial product, that some people think has more evil in it than good for the majority of mankind, and that certainly has been forced on mankind by a very small minority. The foundation on which the force has rested for four hundred years has been the gun.

But whatever the comparative amount of influence of the gun and the printing press, there can be no doubt that they have worked together hand in hand: that one guarded, and the other assisted, the first tottering steps of the Renaissance movement, and that both have continued to guard and assist the grand march that soon began, and that is still advancing.

As the circumstances surrounding the invention of both the gun and the art of printing are sufficiently well known to warrant the belief that each was made, not by a king or any other man of high position, but by a man relatively obscure, and that the surroundings and early life of both were not those of courts or palaces, but those of a humble kind, it may be well to note how enormous are the results that have flowed from causes that seem to be very small. We have been told that "great oaks from little acorns grow"; but the consequences that have grown from the conception of the idea of printing are larger than any oak; and an acorn is probably much larger than the part of the brain in which an idea is conceived.

As a matter of interest, let us realize the strong resemblance between the impression we receive from a material object actually seen by the eye and the memory of that impression afterwards. Let us then realize the strong resemblance between it and another impression of that same object seen mentally but not physically; for instance, let us realize the strong resemblance between the impression made on us by actually seeing some friend and the impression received by imagining him receiving a letter which we are now writing to him. The first picture was an image of the external object that was physically made on the retina, as a picture or image is made by a camera on a screen; but that picture on the retina must have been seen by the brain, or we would not have known of it. The other pictures were not made physically on the retina, so far as we know. Yet we all realize that we can make pictures on our minds the more readily if we close our eyes. The fact of our eyes being open seems to operate adversely to our receiving a clear mental picture.

Now it is a matter of fact that an object (for instance, a pole) can be seen by a person with normal eyesight, if it subtends an angle as great as one minute; that a pole a foot thick can be seen clearly from a distance of 3600 feet, at which distance it subtends that angle. The rays of light pass through the crystalline lens of the eye and are focussed on the retina, as they pass through the lens of the camera, and are focussed on the sensitized paper. Assuming the distance from the crystalline lens to the retina to be about three-quarters of an inch, the pole would be represented on the retina by an image 3/(4 x 3600) or less than 1/4000 of an inch wide. During daylight our retinas are continually receiving images of which all lines as wide as 1/4000 of an inch (and much narrower) are very clearly apprehended by the mind.

But very few of those images are noticed by us. It is only when some incident calls them to our attention, or when the mind voluntarily seizes on them, that any conscious impression is made upon the brain. Similarly, images of physical objects unseen by the physical eye are continually made on the mind: we are continually thinking of our friends and of past incidents and possible future incidents; and our thoughts of these things take the form of pictures. We see the man with whom we had a conversation yesterday, and we see him with a clearness that is proportional to the interest taken by the mind in the conversation and the circumstances surrounding it. If our conversation was uninteresting and the circumstances tame, we see him dimly. But if our conversation was angry and the circumstances were exciting, we see him and the surroundings very vividly – so vividly that our anger is again aroused; perhaps to as high degree as on the day before, or even higher.

This image-making is, of course, voluntary sometimes; but most images come without volition on our part, and require no effort that we are conscious of. To call up an image voluntarily requires conscious effort; and to keep it in position while we gaze upon it requires effort that is great in proportion to the time during which it is exerted. Psychologists speak of this act of keeping an image in position as one of giving attention, or paying attention.

To perform this act requires the exercise of will, unless the act gives pleasure, or the image suggests danger; in each of these cases, of course, the act is almost involuntary.