THE AUTOCRACY OF THE INVENTOR 61 



have been performed at all. They filed or they Book i 

 cast pieces of metal into new shapes ; with these 

 pieces of metal they connected in new order pieces 

 of other materials, such as wood and vulcanite, the 

 shape of these last being new and special also ; and 

 every piece of material shaped or connected with 

 another piece was the exact resultant of so many 

 manual movements made in passive obedience to the 

 inventor's autocratic orders. It was only because his 

 orders were obeyed with such humble fidelity and 

 completeness that these movements resulted in 

 telephones, enriching the world with a new con- 

 venience, and not in the old-fashioned telegraphic 

 machines, or in penholders, or vulcanite inkstands, 

 or even in useless heaps of shavings and brass 

 filings. And the same is the case with every inven- 

 tion or contrivance which has helped to build up the 

 fabric of modern material civilisation. 



Civilisation, however, even in its most material 

 sense, does not consist of contrivances and inventions 

 only. " The one operation'' says Mill, " of putting 

 things into jit places . . . is all that man does, or 

 can do, with matter. He has no other means of 

 acting on it than by moving it." But valuable as this 

 formula is, it is not sufficiently comprehensive ; for 

 there is another economic process which, to the The great man 

 ordinary mind at all events, is hardly suggested by onfcre MS 

 such a phrase as "to move matter." 



The process referred to consists in the moving of 

 men. What is meant by the distinction here drawn 

 is this that the industrial efficiency of a community 



