And he argued,
lastly, that the sudden multiplication of all kinds of printed matter
had been fatal to the orderly arrangement of thought, and had hindered a
system of knowledge and a scheme of education.
I am far from sharing this immature view. Of course I hold the invention
of printing to have been one of the most momentous facts in the whole
history of man. Without it universal social progress, true democratic
enlightenment, and the education of the people would have been
impossible, or very slow, even if the cultured few, as is likely, could
have advanced the knowledge of mankind without it. We place Gutenberg
amongst the small list of the unique and special benefactors of
mankind, in the sacred choir of those whose work transformed the
conditions of life, whose work, once done, could never be repeated. And
no doubt the things which our ardent friend regarded as so fatal a
disturbance of society were all inevitable and necessary, part of the
great revolution of mind through which men grew out of the mediaeval
incompleteness to a richer conception of life and of the world.
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