INTENTION AND THE WALTER PRESS 103 



by the great man remains as essential, and remains Book i 

 as large as ever. The fact that the Walter press 

 could never have existed unless Caxton's press had 

 existed, and that Caxton never foresaw the future 

 development of his apparatus, does nothing to 

 disprove the fact that in the development of 

 printing generally, genius like Caxton's was an 

 indispensable agent, and one which stamped its 

 character on the whole sequence of inventions which 

 it inaugurated. Nor again does the fact that an 

 invention like the Walter press implies not only 

 a direct sequence of inventions and discoveries, 

 but also a concurrence of many separate sequences, 

 such as the invention and discoveries of chemists, 

 of machine - makers, and producers of iron, 

 do anything to disprove the importance and the 

 necessity of the part played by the men to whose 

 genius the press was directly due. For although 

 the co-existence of the separate sequences referred to 

 the parallel march of progress in many separate 

 arts and sciences may have been altogether un- 

 intended by any of those concerned in them, what 

 was emphatically not unintended was their final 

 concurrence the fact of their being brought together 

 for one definite purpose. This was due to the 

 deliberate intention of exceptional men with strong 

 synthetic powers, who appropriated and connected 

 the achievements of various other men. Chemistry, 

 geometry, the production of iron, and the develop- 

 ment of machinery for machine-making would never 

 have worked together to produce an automatic 



