103 



Our Retrospect. 



become so centuries hence; and so in that generous spirit of progress 

 the world have learned to throw open the doors of its treasure houses 

 of knowledge and let their light and intelligence stream forth freely 

 for every class and people? 



Iu his " Study of Sociology " Herbert Spencer writes at much length 

 about the many steps generally needed to bring about and perfect what at 

 first sight seems a very ordinary and comprehensible result; so simple 

 in its origination and application, and so necessary, withal, to the 

 progress and happiness of the world, that we feel perplexed to under- 

 stand how purposes apparently so easy of attainment had not been 

 reached centuries before, not merely through the ready skill of any 

 one among thousands of intelligent workers, but also through the co- 

 operative adoption of it by an appreciative community. He instances 

 a copy of the London Times. Surely this should have been a thing 

 easy of production even from early ages, if people had been so inclined. 

 What so ready of conception as the fact that a few movable blocks of 

 wood or metal, blackened and pressed upon some white yielding sub- 

 stance, should leave their traces, to be read by any one who knows how 

 to read at all ! How natural, too, that with this easy method of con- 

 veying intelligence, the world should hasten to gather together all 

 current information at stated times, and bring it to one center of 

 dissemination! And why, therefore, should there not have been a 

 London Timesixom time immemorial? But at the date of the origin 

 of printing, it seems to have needed more than ordinary brain power 

 even to conceive of the plain fact that types could be so constructed 

 and impressed, much more to contemplate the possibility of inventing 

 the soft white material which we call paper. And in the story of the 

 progression of these conceptions to maturity from their earliest stage of 

 experiment, there is no one who can now place in due order and se- 

 quence the mechanical and chemical applications which necessarily 

 introduced further improvements, one upon the other, before the 

 manufacture of type and paper even in their most simple state became 

 a practical possibility. And there is the printing press itself, 

 gradually evolved from a slow and awkward hand-machine into 

 a wonder of complex machinery, and even in that shape useless 

 unless aided by the still more wonderful application of steam power ; 

 what thousands of inventive minds must have worn themselves out in 

 toil and study before those machines could exist in their present per- 

 fection ! And there must be the education to permit of the collection 

 and record of ideas for dissemination, and the will to make this dis- 

 semination for the world's benefit; else would those machines, how- 

 ever grandly perfected, stand idle and useless. And there must be the 



