EVOLUTION AND THE WALTER PRESS 101 



by evolution in the production of Hamlet and Book i 

 Antigone is totally distinct from, and is altogether 

 dwarfed by, the part played by the genius and the 

 intentions of their great authors. 



Let us now turn to invention and applied science ; we see the 

 and the history of social progress, as connected ^history of 

 with and derived from them, will show the same 

 two elements the unintended and the intended, 

 similarly related and similarly coexistent. A 

 brilliant illustration of this fact is provided for 

 us, in one of his books, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, 

 though he himself, with a curious blindness and 

 perversity, uses it not to illustrate but to ob- 

 scure the point on which we are now dwelling. 

 The illustration referred to is the history of the 

 press by which the Times is printed, which imple- 

 ment, according to Mr. Spencer, is the result 

 altogether of evolution. " In the first place," he 

 says, " this automatic printing machine is lineally 

 descended front other automatic printing machines 

 . . . each pre-supposing others that went before. . . . 

 And then, in tracing the more remote antecedents, we 

 find an ancestry of hand printing presses." He 

 further points out that this press implies not only an 

 ancestry of former presses, but also the existence of 

 the machinery used in making it, and again how this 

 machine-making machinery has a distinct ancestry 

 of its own, which includes the fact of the abundance 

 of iron in England. Geometry, physics, chemistry 

 also, he says, played their part in the process ; and 

 he winds up by referring to purely social causes. 



