Kitabı oku: «Invention: The Master-key to Progress», sayfa 4

CHAPTER III
INVENTION IN GREECE

Our brief survey has thus far carried us over the lands of Egypt, China and western Asia; lands so far removed from us in distance, and inhabited by people so far removed from us in time and character, that they seem to belong almost to another world. But we now are coming to a country which, though its history goes back many centuries before the Christian era, was a country of Europe and inhabited by a people who seem near. The Greeks who overran what we now call Greece, probably about 1500 B. C., took possession of a civilization exceedingly high, which the inhabitants of the mainland and the Ægean Islands had received from the East, through the Phœnicians, who brought it in their ships. This civilization the Ægean islanders, especially the Cretans, had developed and improved, particularly in creations of beauty and works of art. The Greeks created a still higher civilization, and transmitted it to us. The influence of Greek civilization we see on every hand: – in our language, in our daily life, and especially in our ideas of art, literature and philosophy.

That a civilization so high and beautiful should have been attained, could hardly have been brought about without the presence of great imagination among the Greeks, and the exercise of considerable invention. The presence of both imagination and invention are evidenced in every page of the early history of Greece, in the stirring stories of her heroes, and in the conception and development of her government. Compared with the stories of ancient Greece, the stories of the childhood of every other country seem unimaginative and tame. The stories of early Greece still live and still have the power to charm. The Iliad and Odyssey are in the first rank of the great poems even now; and the story of Helen and the siege of Troy is as full of life and color as any that we know.

An interesting legend characteristic of the inventiveness of the ancient Greeks was that of the large wooden horse in which a hundred brave warriors concealed themselves, and were drawn within the walls of Troy by the Trojans themselves, who had been induced to do this by an ingenious story, invented to deceive them. Whether the legend is true or not does not affect the fact that invention was needed and employed to create the legend in the one case, or to cause the incident in the other case.

The prehistoric age of Greece was filled with myths of so much beauty, interest and originality, that the Greek mythology is more read, even now, than any other. It formed also the basis of the later mythology of the Romans.

It may be noted here that mere imagination is not a quality of very high importance, unless it be associated with constructiveness. In fact, imagination is evidenced more by savage and barbarous peoples than by the civilized; as it is also by children and women than by men. Imagination by itself, untrained and undirected, while it is unquestionably an attribute of the mind, is not one of reason, in the sense that it does not necessarily employ the reasoning faculties. In fact, the imagination, unless trained and well-directed, may lead us to the absurdest performances, in defiance of the suggestions of reason. Using the word imagination in this sense, Shakespeare said —

 
"The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact."
 

It is only when imagination has been assisted by reason, it is only when conception has been followed by construction, that practical inventions have resulted.

The myths invented by the Greeks in their prehistoric period were the products of not only imagination but construction. Each myth was a perfectly connected story, complete in all necessary detail, admirably put together, and told in charming language. The story of Jason's Argonautic Expedition in search of the Golden Fleece cannot be surpassed in any of the elements that make a story good; Penelope is still the model of conjugal devotion, and Achilles the ideal warrior; Poseidon, or his Roman successor, Neptune, still rules the waves; Aphrodite, or Venus, calls up more vividly before our minds than any other name the vision of feminine beauty even to this day. Hercules exemplifies muscular strength, and Apollo still typifies that which is most beautiful in manliness.

The influence of the Grecian myths, "pure inventions" as they were, in the sense that they were fictitious and not true, has been explained and demonstrated at great length and with abundant enthusiasm by poets and scholars for many centuries. They have been generally regarded as inventions, but nevertheless as quite different from such inventions as the steam-engine or the printing press. The present author wishes to point out that the mental processes by which both myths and engines were created were alike, and that the inventions differed mainly in the uses to which they were put.

Even the uses to which they were put were similar in the end; for the use of the myths and of the steam engine was to improve the conditions of man's existence. There is only one way in which to do this, and that is by improving the impressions made on his mind. The myths did this by making beautiful pictures for his mind to gaze at, and by using them to induce him to follow a certain (good) line of conduct, rather than the contrary. The steam engine did it by making the conditions of living more comfortable, by rendering transportation more safe and rapid, and by rendering possible the procuring of many of the pleasant things of life from distant places.

The invention of a myth may be said to be the invention of an immaterial thing; the invention of a steam engine to be of a material thing. These two lines of effort, invention has followed since long before the dawn of history. Of the two, the invention of myths and stories probably succeeded the other.

Probably also it has been the more important in affecting our actual degree of happiness; affecting it beneficently in the main. For, while some myths and stories have filled men with dread and horror, a very large majority have had the opposite effect; and while many mechanical inventions have contributed to our material ease and comfort, it is not clear that they have much increased our actual happiness. Men accommodate themselves easily to changes in their material surroundings; what is a luxury today will be a necessity tomorrow; and very many of the material inventions have tended to artificial and unhealthful modes of living, with consequent physical deterioration and its accompanying loss of happiness.

As to influence on history, however, the influence of the material inventions has probably been the greater. Immaterial inventions might have been made in enormous numbers without of themselves affecting history greatly; but the material inventions have brought about most of the events that history describes; and without one material invention, that of writing, history could not exist at all. History is rather a narrative of men's deeds than of their thoughts; and their deeds have been directed largely by the implements which they had to do deeds with.

We must realize, of course, that the Greeks were much indebted to the Ægeans; for discoveries about the shores and islands of the Ægean Sea show that long before the advent of the Greeks they used tools and weapons of rough and then of polished stone, and later of copper and tin and bronze; that they lived on farms and in villages and cities, and were governed by monarchs who dwelt in palaces adorned with paintings and fine carvings, and filled with court gentlemen and ladies who wore jewelry and fine clothing. Exquisite pottery was used, decorated with taste and skill; ivory was carved and gems were engraved, and articles were made of silver and bronze and gold.

As early as the sixth century B. C., the Greeks made things more beautiful than had ever been made before. One almost feels like saying that the Greeks invented beauty. Such a declaration would be absurd of course: but it seems to be a fact that the Greeks had a conception of beauty that was wholly original with them, and that was not only finer than that which any other people had ever had before, but finer than any other people have had since. And not only did they have the conception, they had the ability to embody the conception in material forms that possessed a beauty higher than had ever been produced before, and higher (at least on the average) than have ever been produced in any other country since.

Looked at in this way, the production of a new and beautiful statue, painting or temple, seems to be an act of invention much like the formulation of a myth or the writing of a poem. In this sense, the Greeks were inventors, inventors of works of beauty that have existed as concrete material creations for centuries, and have exercised an enduring influence on the minds of men.

The influence of paintings, statues and temples is not so clear as that of material inventions, but more clear than that of myths and poems. They may be said to form a class midway between inventions of material appliances and inventions of immaterial thoughts and fancies. A beautiful painting or statue is a material object in the same sense as that in which a steam engine is; but its office is to stimulate the mind, as a poem does.

The first inventor of mechanical appliances, mentioned by name as such, was Dædalus of Athens. He was probably a mythical person. He was reputed to be the son or the grandson of Erectheus, a probably mythical king. He is credited with the invention of the saw, the gimlet, the plumb-line, the axe, the wedge, the lever, masts and sails and even of flying; – for he is said to have escaped from Crete to Sicily with artificial wings. The story of Dædalus, like that of many other mythological personages, is both interesting and irritating from the mixture of the very probable, the highly improbable, and the entirely impossible, in a jumble. But the story of Dædalus seems to make it probable that all the things which he is reported to have invented (except flying) were in use in Greece in prehistoric times.

As no records show to us that the inventions just enumerated (except masts and sails) had been invented elsewhere, we may feel justified in inferring that they were invented in Greece by Dædalus, or by some other man bearing a different name, – or by some other men. The name borne by the man is not important to us now; but it is important to realize that such brilliant and original inventions were made so long ago by a primeval people; especially since they were of a character somewhat different from those invented in Egypt and Asia which we have already noted. The invention of the gimlet seems the most brilliant and original of those just spoken of; and one marvels that it should have been invented at such a time; for the action of the gimlet was a little more complicated than that of even the balista or the catapult. It is true that the number of parts was less, that in fact there was only one part. But that part turned around in one plane, and advanced in another; it was less like anything that existed before than the catapult was like the sling, or the balista was like the cross-bow. There was no immediate forerunner of the gimlet. In other words, the mental jump needed to invent the gimlet was from a base of nothing that we can exactly specify.

A possible suggestion for the gimlet was the succession of inclined planes by which one mounted to the top of an Assyrian or Chaldean palace; these planes rising gradually on each of the four sides, so as to form together what might be called a square spiral. It is possible that a circular spiral may have been traced later around some cylindrical shaft or column, and given the first suggestion for the screw or gimlet. Of course, a gimlet is a kind of screw. The Greeks do not seem to have applied their inventiveness after the time of Dædalus to mechanical appliances, but to works of art and systems of religion and philosophy. One of their most important inventions may be said to be mid-way between: it consisted in adding vowels to the Phœnician alphabet and producing the basis of the Latin and succeeding alphabets. The Greeks were not naturally of a warlike disposition, and their peculiarly jealous temperament prevented the various states and cities from combining and forming a great nation. Their energetic character and great intellectuality saved them, however, when Darius, King of Persia, invaded Greece in 490 B. C.

By that time the Greeks had raised and trained an army of great excellence. No especial inventiveness seems to have been exercised, but the equipments of the men, their organization, their armor, their weapons and their discipline had been brought to a standard exceedingly high. All these advantages were needed; for the Persians were a warlike people, their King Darius was an ambitious and successful conqueror, and the number of Persians that invaded Greece was far greater than the number that Greece could raise to fight them.

Had the Greeks been destitute of invention they would have followed the most obvious course, that of shutting themselves up inside the protection of the walls of Athens. Had they done this, the Persians would have surrounded the city, shut them off from supplies from outside, and slowly but surely forced them to surrender.

But, on the insistent advice of Miltiades, the Greeks advanced to meet the Persians, leaving the shelter of their walls behind them. It may not seem to some that Miltiades made any invention in planning the campaign which he urged against much resistance, and which the Athenians finally carried out. Yet his mental action was one allied to that of making an invention; for his mind conceived a plan as a purely mental picture, then developed into a workable project, and then presented it as a concrete proposition. Later, when the hostile forces met on the low plain of Marathon, Miltiades rejected the obvious plan that an uninventive mind would have adopted. Instead of it, he invented the plan of weakening his center, strengthening his flanks, and departing from the usual custom of advancing slowly against the enemy, in favor of advancing on the run. The plan (invention) worked perfectly. The unsuspecting Persians broke through the center and pursued the fleeing Athenians to a rough ground; – only to be caught between the two flanks, like a nut in a nut-cracker, and crushed to pieces.

It can hardly be seriously questioned that in this plan Miltiades showed the abilities of the inventor, and in a highly brilliant and highly important way. Had he fought the battle in the obvious way, the great numerical superiority of the Persians could hardly have failed to gain the victory, despite a really considerable superiority of the Athenians in training and equipment. But the Persians were the victims of a new and unexpected kind of attack. A new weapon suddenly brought to bear on them would have had a similar effect.

This is the first illustration in recorded history of the influence of invention on the deciding of a war. Its influence was enormous in this case; for the battle of Marathon was one of the most decisive and one of the most important battles ever fought. If it had been decided contrariwise, Grecian civilization would have been stamped out, or so completely stifled that it would never have risen to the heights it afterwards attained; freedom of thought and government would have been smothered, and the world would be immeasurably different now from what it really is.

The defeat of the Persians was so decisive that they withdrew to their own country, but with the determination of returning, and in overwhelming force. By reason of a variety of circumstances, including the death of the king, the invasion did not take place until ten years later. Then, in the year 480 B. C., King Xerxes set out on a punitive expedition against Greece with an enormous military and naval force.

Again Greece was saved from Persia by pure brain power, that of Themistocles. Like Miltiades, he rejected the obvious. Discerning, as no one else discerned, that the weakest point in the Persian forces was the line of communication across the Ægean Sea, because the ships of those days were fragile, and an invading army needed to get supplies continually from Persia, he pointed out that although it was the Persian army that would do the actual damage in Greece, yet nevertheless, the major effort of the Athenians should not be spent on their army but on their navy.

The difficulties he met in making the Athenians see the truth may easily be imagined, from experiences in our own day. He succeeded at last, however; so that by the time the Persians reached Greece, Greece had a fleet that was very good, though not nearly so large as the Persian. The fleets came near to each other in the vicinity of Athens. The majority of the Athenian leaders advised that the Athenian fleet should retreat toward the south and west, to the isthmus of Corinth, and await the Persians there; because, if defeated, a safe retreat could be effected. But Themistocles opposed this plan with all the force and eloquence he could bring to bear; pointing out that the aim of the Athenians should not be to find a safe line of retreat, but to win a battle; and that the Bay of Salamis was the best place, for two reasons. One reason was that the Persians would have to enter the bay in column, because the entrance was narrow, and the Persian ships, as they successively passed into the bay, would therefore be at a great disadvantage against the combined attack of the Athenian ships, waiting for them there; the other reason was that the bay was so small that the great numbers and size of the Persian ships would be a disadvantage, instead of an advantage. Themistocles (not without the use of considerable diplomacy and even subterfuge) finally secured the assent of the other Athenian leaders. The result was exactly what he predicted that it would be. The Persian fleet was wholly defeated, and Greece again was saved.

The great victory of the Greeks over the Persians wrought a powerful stimulation among all the people, especially in Athens, and was followed by the most extraordinary intellectual movement in the history of the world. It lasted about a century and a half; and in no other country, and at no other period, has so much intellectual achievement been accomplished by so few people in so short a time.

Before the Persian wars, the Greeks had already shown an extraordinary originality in art and literature; especially in architecture, sculpture and poetry. Naturally these peaceful arts languished during the wars; but after the Persian invaders had been finally ejected, they rose with renewed vigor, stimulated by the patriotic enthusiasm of the nation as a whole.

It was in Athens, and among the Athenians that most of the movement was carried on. The principal state in Greece besides Athens then was Sparta. The Spartans devoted themselves mainly to warlike and allied arts, while the Athenians devoted themselves mainly to the beautification of Athens; though they were careful to guard it adequately by maintaining an excellent navy, surrounding the city with high walls, and building two long parallel walls from Athens to Piræus, its seaport.

It would be out of place in a book like this to attempt any description or discussion of the various phases of the intellectual activities that rose with such startling quickness, and developed into such important movements, during the century and a half that followed the Persian wars; especially as this has already been done by many scholars, in many languages, and at many times. A very brief and elementary statement may, however, be made, for the purpose of illustrating the influence of invention on history.

The main characteristic of the movement as a whole and of every one of the various channels which it followed, was originality. No such perception of beauty had ever been evidenced before; no such conceptions of logic, philosophy or science.

Accompanying these was a conception of free government equally original. Whether the government of Athens was the cause of the intellectual rise, or the intellectual rise was the cause of the government, may safely be left to scholars to debate; for the purposes of the present discussion, it seems sufficient that they co-existed and had together a powerful influence on history.

The greatest genius that guided the intellectual forces of the Athenians in the matter of government was that of Pericles, who ruled their minds by pure force of argument and persuasion, from about 445 to 431 B. C. Athens and her subject cities formed a virtual empire, small in extent, but powerful in influence; though in form it was a democracy. In some ways it was the most perfect democracy that ever has existed even to this day; for not only was every citizen available for office, but he was expected to take active part in deciding public measures, and to be really qualified to hold office.

This idea was put into practical operation by a careful system of payment for every public service; to the end that even the poorest citizen should be enabled to hold office, and a wealthy office-holding caste prevented from existing. To so great an extent was this carried out that, by the time that the Age of Pericles ceased and the Peloponnesian War began, almost every citizen was in the pay of the state. The perfect equality of all the citizens, and their community of interests and privileges, was recognized by supplying them at times with free tickets to places of amusement, and by banqueting the people on great occasions at the expense of the state. To distribute widely the powers and duties of citizenship, exceedingly large juries were established for the trials of all cases. There was no king or president or prime minister. The source of authority was the Assembly which included every citizen over eighteen years of age, and held forty meetings a year. Cooperating, as a sort of committee, was a Council of Five Hundred, whose members were chosen by lot each year from citizens over thirty years of age.

The success of the Athenian democracy has had a powerful influence ever since on history; because it has supplied not only a precedent but an encouragement to every people to try to escape from the individual restrictions that monarchies and all "strong governments" tend to impose. But it had another though less powerful influence also, which continued for a long while, but now has ceased, in supplying a precedent for slavery. For while the citizens of Athens were free, only the sons of Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers could be citizens; many thousand workers and merchants of all kinds could take no part in the government, and there were besides an enormous number of slaves. It was to a great degree the fact of slavery that made possible the success of the so-called Athenian democracy; for it liberated the citizens in very great measure from the drudgery of life, and gave them leisure to devote themselves to the study of government and the arts.

In addition, Athens acquired great wealth from the spoils of its wars and the tribute of its subject states. This wealth was expended largely in the beautifying of Athens, and in the consequent encouragement and opportunity to artists of all kinds. Naturally, the art most immediately encouraged was that of architecture; and that the encouragement met with ready and great success the most beautiful ruins in the world superbly testify. The directing genius in this work and in all the others was Pericles, who stimulated the Athenians with his conception and description of a city worthy to symbolize the power and glory of the empire. The twin arts of architecture and sculpture worked together and in harmony; and a city more beautiful than ever known before, or ever known since, testified to the soundness and brilliancy of the conception and to the constructive ability of the Athenians to embody it in material form.

The poets and scholars kept pace with the statesmen and the architects and the sculptors; but the philosophers surpassed them all. For, while the successful democracy of Athens is a model still, and while the Parthenon and the statue of Apollo are models still, yet an integral part of the system of government (slavery) has been abjured by the civilized world, and the temples and the statues have been for the pleasure of but a few; while the teachings of the philosophers have been the basis on which has rested ever since much of the intellectual progress of mankind.

It may be noted here that, as men have progressed up the steep road to civilization, the only guides they have had have been men who have not themselves passed over the road before, and whose only qualification as guides has lain in some attribute of the mind that enabled them to survey the road a little farther ahead than the others could, and to point out the paths to take, and the obstructions to avoid. Man's physical instincts guide him considerably as to the methods to preserve his physical existence; but they help him not at all to lift himself above his physical self, and in many ways they hinder him. It seems to be the office of the mind both to discern the upward paths and to stimulate the will to overcome the difficulties and dangers in the way.

Of the great pointers of the way, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others, it might be deemed presumptuous of the present author to do more than speak; and of the great stimulators, Æschuylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and, above all, Demosthenes as well. But because it is pertinent to our subject it is instructive for us to note that the main distinctive feature of the work of each was originality. It is true that it is the completed work in the case of each that meets our gaze; it is true that the superficial impression would be the same, even if each work had been a copy of some work that had gone before; in the same way that, superficially, many a copy of an oil painting is as good as the original. But from the standpoint of influence on the future, it is the originator rather than the copyist who wields the influence; just as it is the basic inventor of a mechanical appliance rather than the man who improves upon it.

The Athenians and Spartans became involved in the Peloponnesian War, that lasted from 431 to 404 B. C., and ended with the capture of Athens. The Spartans thereupon became dominant in Greece, but only to be mastered by the Thebans in 371 B. C. The little jealous states of Greece were never able to agree together long, and no one state was ever able to unite them. But the half-barbarian people of Macedonia, under Philip their king, after developing their army, according to a novel system invented by him, overcame and then united under their sway the highly cultured but now military weak states that had despised them.

Possibly, it would somewhat strain the meaning of the word invention, to declare that Philip made a radically new invention, when he improved on the Theban phalanx, and devised his system of military training; for kings and other leaders had trained armies long before Philip lived, and Philip departed only in what some might call detail from the methods that had been used before. But, at the same time, it was an act, or a series of acts, betokening great initiative and originality, for a man ruling a weak collection of tribes such as dwelt in Macedon, to create out of such crude material as he began with, such an extraordinary army as he ultimately was able to lead to battle. To accomplish this it was necessary for him to conceive the idea of doing it, then to embody his conception in a formulated plan, and then bring forth the finished product. The thought of doing it must have come to him: – how else could he get it? An idea comes from outside through the mental eye to the mind; as a ray of light comes from outside through the physical eye to the retina.

The picture made on Philip's mind must have impressed him profoundly, for he spent the rest of his life in giving it "a local habitation and a name." To accomplish it cost him years of continual effort of many kinds, but he did accomplish it. He did, as a result, produce a machine, as truly a machine as Stephenson ever produced, but made up of many more parts; each part independent of any other, and yet dependent on every other, and all working together, for a common purpose.

Let us remind ourselves again that a machine composed of inanimate parts only is only one kind of machine; for a machine may be composed of animate parts, or inanimate parts, or of parts of which some are animate and some inanimate. Clearly, it makes no difference, so far as the act of invention goes, whether a man uses animate or inanimate parts; the essential of invention is the creation of a new thing. If a man merely puts two pieces of wood and a piece of string into a pile, or if he merely collects a number of men together, no invention is made and nothing is created. But if he so combines the two pieces of wood and the string as to make a bow and arrow; or if he combines a modified Theban phalanx with masses of cavalry and catapults in a novel and effective way as Philip did, invention is exercised and something is created.

Before Philip's time a phalanx was used to bear the brunt of the battle, and to overwhelm the enemy by mere strength and force; as the Thebans did at Leuctra and Mantinea. But Philip conceived the idea of merely holding the enemy with his phalanx assisted by the catapults, and hurling his cavalry against their flanks. Philip's army, as Philip used it, was a machine and a very powerful one: – each part independent of every other, yet dependent on every other – all the parts working together for a common purpose. Philip conceived the idea of making this machine, and afterwards made it; just as Ericsson more than two thousand years later conceived the idea of making a "Monitor" and afterwards made it.