Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

A terrible war was raging, however, that was not to end for fifteen years and that involved, directly or indirectly, nearly every European nation. The war had started in France, where the tremendous intellectual movement had aroused the excitable people of that land to a realization of the oppression of the nobility and a determination to make it cease.

The wars that ensued were not so different from the wars of the Egyptians and other ancient nations as one might carelessly suppose, because the weapons were not very different. The only weapon that was very novel was the gun; and the gun of the year 1800 was a contrivance so vastly inferior to the gun that exists today as not to be immeasurably superior to the bow and arrow. It had to be loaded slowly at the muzzle; and the powder was so non-uniform and in other ways inferior, that the gun's range was short and its accuracy slight. Even the artillery that Bonaparte used so skillfully was crude and ineffective, according to the standards of today. The cavalry was not very different from the cavalry of the Assyrians, and the military engineers performed few feats greater than that of Cæsar's, in building the bridge across the Rhine. There were no railroads, no steamships, no telegraphs, no telephones. There was less difference between the armies of 1800 A. D. and those of 1800 B. C., than between the armies of 1800 A. D. and those of 1900 A. D.

The same remark applies to virtually all the material conditions of living. There was less difference, for instance, between the fine buildings of 1800 B. C. and 1800 A. D. than between the fine buildings of 1800 and 1900 A. D. The influence of the new inventions on the material conditions of living was only beginning to be felt; for the twin agencies of steam and electricity, that were later to make the difference, had not yet got to work. It was the power of steam that was to transport men and materials across vast oceans and across great continents at high speed, and place in the hands of every people the natural fruits and the foods and the raw materials and the manufactured appliances of other lands; it was the subtle influence of electricity that was to give every people instant communication with every other. It was the co-working of steam and electricity that was to make possible the British navy and the British merchant marine, and the relatively smaller merchant marines and navies of other countries, and to bring all the world under the dominance of Great Britain and of the other countries that were civilized.

The opening of the nineteenth century, therefore, marks the opening of a new era. In 1800 the steam engine was already an effective appliance, but it was not yet in general use. Electricity was a little behind steam; and though Franklin and the others had proved that it possessed vast possibilities of many kinds, and also that it could be harnessed and put to work by man for the benefit of man, electricity had as yet accomplished little of real value.

Under the stimulating influence of the quick communication given by the art of printing, literature had blossomed especially in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy; but in 1800 one has to notice the same fact as in previous years—literature had not improved. The literature of 1800 A. D. was no better than the literature of Greece or Elizabethan England—to state the truth politely; and no such poet lived as Homer, Shakespeare or John Milton. It seems to be a characteristic of literature, and of all the fine arts as well, that each great product is solely a product of one human mind, and not the product of the combined work of many minds. To the invention of Watt's steam engine, numberless obscure investigators and inventors had contributed, besides those whose great names everybody knows: but how can two men write a poem or any work of fiction, or paint a picture or carve a statue? It is true that each of these feats has been performed; but rarely and not with great success.

For this reason, it is not clear that mere literature as literature, or that any of the fine arts as such can exert much influence on history, and it is not clear that any of them have done so. That they have had great influence in conducing to the pleasure of individuals there can be no question; but the influence seems to have been transient. History is a record of such of the doings of men as have had influence at the time, or in the future. Of these doings, the agency that has had the most obvious influence is war, and next to war is invention. War, next after disease, has caused the most suffering the world knows of; but out of the suffering have emerged the great nations without which modern civilization could not exist. The influence of invention is not so obvious, but it is perhaps as great, or nearly so; the main reason being that invention has been the agency which has enabled those nations to emerge that have emerged. Without the appliances that invention has supplied, the civilized man could not have triumphed over the savage.

Now literature and painting and sculpture and music, while they have made life easier and pleasanter, have contributed little to this work, and in many ways have rather prevented it from going further by softening people, physically and mentally. This statement must not be accepted without reservations of course; for the reason that some poems, some works of fiction, and some paintings and (especially) some musical compositions have tended to strengthen character, and even to stimulate the martial spirit. But a careful inspection of most works of pure literature and fine art must lead a candid person to admit that the major part of their effect has been to please,—to gratify the appetite of the mind rather than to inspire it to action.

The author here requests any possible reader of these pages, not to infer that he has any objection to being pleased himself, or to having others pleased; or that he regards the influence of literature and the fine arts as being detrimental to the race. On the contrary, he regards them as being valuable in the highest degree. He is merely trying to point out the difference between the influence of inventions in the useful arts and those in the fine arts.

A like remark may be made concerning inventors and other men; the word inventors being here supposed to mean the men who make inventions of all kinds. These men seem to have been those who have brought into existence those machines and books and projects of all kinds that have determined the kind of machine of civilization that has now been produced. These men are very few, compared with the great bulk of humanity; but it seems to be they who have given direction to the line along which the machine has been developed.

This does not mean, of course, that these men have been more estimable themselves than the men who kept the machine in smooth and regular motion, and made the repairs, and supplied the oil and fuel; but it does mean that they had more influence in making its improvements. Naturally, their work in making improvements would have been of no avail, if other men had not exerted industry and carefulness and intelligence and courage, in the countless tasks entailed in maintaining the machine in good repair, in keeping it running smoothly, and in receiving with open minds and helping hands each new improvement as it came along. And it was not only in welcoming real improvements, but in keeping out novelties which seemed to be improvements but were not improvements that the work of what may be called the operators, as distinguished from the inventors, was beneficent. Nothing could be more injurious to the machine than to permit the incorporation in it of parts that would not improve it. There has been little danger to fear from this source, however; for the inertia of men is such that it is only rarely that one sees any new device accepted, until it has proved its value definitely and unmistakably in practical work.