THE INVENTOR AND APPLIED KNO WLEDGE 139 



our few books would be produced by the methods Book n 



of the mediaeval scriptorium. These machines are 



instruments of social progress only because, and in 



so far as, they are multiplied and brought into use ; 



and they could not be multiplied as efficient im- 



plements, they could not be even made without 



the co-operation of an enormous number of workers. 



It is probable indeed that in constructing the very 



model itself an inventor will have to employ 



some labour besides his own. Thus this first and invention pro- 



... , .... motes progress 



preliminary step towards rendering his apparatus only because 



a factor in social progress he can take only by ,\ 

 influencing one or two other men, at all events 

 artisans whose technical action he directs in such make and use 



his machines. 



a way that it produces something specifically 

 different from anything which it had produced 

 before ; and as the apparatus is reproduced on a 

 larger scale, put on the market, multiplied so as to 

 meet a growing demand, and thus actually produces 

 an effect on the arts of life, this practical result 

 takes place only because, and in so far as, the 

 number of artisans whose action is influenced by 

 the inventor increases. The inventor, in other 

 words, is an agent of " social progression" only 

 because the particularised knowledge of which his 

 invention consists is embodied either in models, or 

 drawings, or written or spoken orders, and thus 

 affects the technical action of whole classes of other 

 men, just as Mr. Spencer affects, by means of his 

 manuscript, the technical actions of the compositors 

 who put his treatises into type. 



