60 ARISTO CRA CY AND E VOL UT1ON 



nook i passively. He has been as absolute a master of 

 all their professional actions as ever was the most 

 arbitrary general of the professional actions of his 

 soldiery ; and there is absolutely no difference in 

 point of command and obedience between the 

 compositors who, at Mr. Spencer's bidding, put into 

 type the words " homogeneity " and " the Unknow- 

 able'' and the Guards who charged the French at 

 the bidding of the Duke of Wellington. 



The inventor Precisely the same thing is true of all scientific 

 b^who^hiT" inventions not indeed of inventions as mere ideas 

 inventions are anc j discoveries, but of inventions and discoveries 



manufactured. 



applied practically to the service of civilisation. 

 The mere discovery of certain properties belong- 

 ing to material substances, or the thinking out 

 of some new machine or process, may be the 

 work of one man, who has command over nobody 

 except himself. But the moment he proceeds 

 to make his machine or process useful to apply it 

 to the purpose of actual business or manufacture he 

 is obliged to secure for himself an entire army of 

 mercenaries, who act under his orders in precisely 

 the same way as soldiers act under the orders of the 

 military leader, or as the compositors act under the 

 orders of Mr. Spencer. When the electric telegraph 

 was supplemented by the invention of the telephone, 

 telephones were produced, and could have been 

 produced, only by a multitude of men performing a 

 series of manual actions which were different in detail 

 from anything they had performed before, and which, 

 if it had not been for the inventor, would never 



