Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians were a people of extraordinary enterprise and initiative. Inventors are men of extraordinary enterprise and initiative. How much the Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians were more identified with early navigation by sailing vessels and by vessels pulled by oars than any other people. It is even known that Phœnician 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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians 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 Phœnicians 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.

Phœnicia 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. Phœnicia was nearly always a vassal, paying tribute to one great monarchy or another.

In striking contrast with Phœnicia 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.