The Story of Mankind [158]
by an arrogant little Frenchman and the equally
good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly
courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian
flunkey.
And so they both went to war and in less than two months,
Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of
the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the
Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against the
German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten
days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of
Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been
such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia
was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming
of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire
had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teutonic
states and stateless.
In this rough way, the German question was finally settled.
By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable
gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely
undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried
to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods
they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and
the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century
was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has
not yet come to an end.
THE AGE OF THE ENGINE
BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE
FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL
INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY
LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED
BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD
MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE
OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL
AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN
THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than
half a million years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low
brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth.
He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern scientists,
but they would have honoured him as their master. For
he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy
boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our
first tools, and he did more than any human being who came
after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other
animals with whom he shares this planet.
Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use
of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc
made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communities
of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years
ago.
In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent
Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested
that the Patent Office be abolished, because ``everything that
possibly could be invented had been invented.'' A similar
feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when
the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able
to move from place to place without rowing or punting or
pulling from the shore.
Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is
the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his
work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun
or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and
little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals.
Of course in the very olden days; it was always possible
to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant
tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and
Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to
devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-
spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathematician
waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill
the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the marketplace
and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?
And during the middle-ages, although
good people of Paris flew into a rage because their perfectly
courteous minister had been shown the door by a Royal Prussian
flunkey.
And so they both went to war and in less than two months,
Napoleon and the greater part of his army were prisoners of
the Germans. The Second Empire had come to an end and the
Third Republic was making ready to defend Paris against the
German invaders. Paris held out for five long months. Ten
days before the surrender of the city, in the nearby palace of
Versailles, built by that same King Louis XIV who had been
such a dangerous enemy to the Germans, the King of Prussia
was publicly proclaimed German Emperor and a loud booming
of guns told the hungry Parisians that a new German Empire
had taken the place of the old harmless Confederation of Teutonic
states and stateless.
In this rough way, the German question was finally settled.
By the end of the year 1871, fifty-six years after the memorable
gathering at Vienna, the work of the Congress had been entirely
undone. Metternich and Alexander and Talleyrand had tried
to give the people of Europe a lasting peace. The methods
they had employed had caused endless wars and revolutions and
the feeling of a common brotherhood of the eighteenth century
was followed by an era of exaggerated nationalism which has
not yet come to an end.
THE AGE OF THE ENGINE
BUT WHILE THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE WERE
FIGHTING FOR THEIR NATIONAL
INDEPENDENCE, THE WORLD IN WHICH THEY
LIVED HAD BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED
BY A SERIES OF INVENTIONS, WHICH HAD
MADE THE CLUMSY OLD STEAM ENGINE
OF THE 18TH CENTURY THE MOST FAITHFUL
AND EFFICIENT SLAVE OF MAN
THE greatest benefactor of the human race died more than
half a million years ago. He was a hairy creature with a low
brow and sunken eyes, a heavy jaw and strong tiger-like teeth.
He would not have looked well in a gathering of modern scientists,
but they would have honoured him as their master. For
he had used a stone to break a nut and a stick to lift up a heavy
boulder. He was the inventor of the hammer and the lever, our
first tools, and he did more than any human being who came
after him to give man his enormous advantage over the other
animals with whom he shares this planet.
Ever since, man has tried to make his life easier by the use
of a greater number of tools. The first wheel (a round disc
made out of an old tree) created as much stir in the communities
of 100,000 B.C. as the flying machine did only a few years
ago.
In Washington, the story is told of a director of the Patent
Office who in the early thirties of the last century suggested
that the Patent Office be abolished, because ``everything that
possibly could be invented had been invented.'' A similar
feeling must have spread through the prehistoric world when
the first sail was hoisted on a raft and the people were able
to move from place to place without rowing or punting or
pulling from the shore.
Indeed one of the most interesting chapters of history is
the effort of man to let some one else or something else do his
work for him, while he enjoyed his leisure, sitting in the sun
or painting pictures on rocks, or training young wolves and
little tigers to behave like peaceful domestic animals.
Of course in the very olden days; it was always possible
to enslave a weaker neighbour and force him to do the unpleasant
tasks of life. One of the reasons why the Greeks and
Romans, who were quite as intelligent as we are, failed to
devise more interesting machinery, was to be found in the wide-
spread existence of slavery. Why should a great mathematician
waste his time upon wires and pulleys and cogs and fill
the air with noise and smoke when he could go to the marketplace
and buy all the slaves he needed at a very small expense?
And during the middle-ages, although