1 38 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UT1ON 



Book ii primarily upon this ; and what is to be taught about 

 them is determined not by the State, or by any 

 other legally constituted body, but by the masters 

 of speculative knowledge, by contemporary men 

 of science, scholars, historians, and philosophers. 

 Knowledge advances because these men are not 

 only adding to it, but because they are perpetually 

 assimilating the new discoveries with the old ; and 

 these men, by means of their comments on previous 

 writers, or by new works of their own, often repro- 

 duced in the form of text-books, put the word into 

 the teachers' mouths ; and the teachers, like the 

 prophet Balaam, are compelled to speak it. In 

 other words, great speculative thinkers are great 

 as agents of mental civilisation and enlightenment 

 only because, and only in so far as, they settle for 

 others what these others shall believe and think. 

 A similar thing And now let us pass from mental progress to 

 ven'uon? which material that is to say, from speculative knowledge 

 appHed. ledge to applied knowledge ; and the truth that is being here 

 insisted on will become clearer still. The master of 

 knowledge, as applied to production, is the inventor. 

 Now the most perfect and important machines 

 ever devised by man let us say the steam-engine 

 and the printing press had they been planned by 

 their original inventors in all their present complete- 

 ness, but kept by the inventors to themselves in the 

 form of working models, made by their own hands 

 and shut up in their own rooms, would have left 

 the arts of life totally unaffected ; our fastest 

 means of travelling would still be the stage-coach ; 



