The great secret of the Renaissance is indeed this release of the restless spirit of inquiry after truth, that is as old as humanity itself, and that, swooping like a bird through the door of a cage out into the air and sunshine, reckless of danger, carried along by the sheer joy of unfettered life, sometimes foolish and extravagant in its zest for experience, was at first too absorbed in the glory and interest of freedom to feel any regret for the prison that had been at least a shelter from the many stormy problems that were to rend the modern world. Charlemagne had believed that ‘without knowledge good works were impossible’. The men of the early Renaissance were not so intent upon the importance of good works or the hope of salvation as their forefathers, but they would have assented eagerly to the statement that ‘without knowledge any true understanding of human life was impossible’. Had the conditions under which knowledge could be obtained remained as restricted as in mediaeval times, the Renaissance on its intellectual side would in all probability have become a cult, a movement shared by a few learned men and women to which the mass of the people in every nation had no clue; and in this way it would have died out like a plant unable to spread its roots. Human invention intervened with the discovery of printing, which brought the great thoughts of the world out of the monastic libraries, where they had been laboriously collected and copied by hand, to distribute them, slowly at first but ever faster and faster, throughout the busy centres of Europe, where brains as well as stomachs are always eager for food. It was a German, John Gutenburg, who invented printing by means of movable types, but because he had not enough money to carry out his design he was forced to borrow from a rich citizen of Mainz called John Fust. This Fust treated John Gutenburg very badly, for he demanded back the money he had lent so soon as he understood the value of the other’s secret, and by this means forced Gutenburg, when he could not pay, to hand over his plant in compensation. Fust then began to print on his own account, and when the people of Mainz saw the copies of the Bible that he produced, each number an exact replica of the first, they declared that he had sold himself to the devil and was practising magic. Thus, it is said, started the legend of Doctor Faustus that has inspired poets, musicians, and dramatists. The first English printer was William Caxton, a Kentishman, to view whose press came King and court in great amazement, interested, but utterly unaware of what a mental revolution this small piece of machinery was to bring about.