The origin of the processes of reproduction is invariably utilitarian. Every advance, every new technical attainment, can be traced to the demand for devices which would lessen labor and save time. The graphic arts do not share with painting a development based upon a desire for æsthetic expression. Their origin is imitative, thoroughly democratic, and every process continues in that lowly sphere, until the genius of some powerful artist lifts it into realms of art. For the very reason of this utilitarian tendency, and because of a gamut of expression restricted to line and tone for the interpretation of a world of color and form, the graphic arts, even more than other forms of artistic expression, need the steady hand of the gifted artist to sustain them on a high plane of excellence. Deprived of this guiding support, their decline to levels of mediocrity and commercialism is swift and inevitable. If we glance at early periods of history, we are readily convinced that before the fifteenth century there existed no demand for pictorial work widespread or emphatic enough to call into life speedier substitutes for hand work. Surely no need of such substitutes was felt in the Græco-Roman world, where a well-developed system of scribes met the demands of their patrons. Nor were multiplying devices needed in the early days of Christianity. The new faith, to be sure, made its appeal to everybody, to the high-born and lowly alike, but it relied mainly on the word of the preacher for the transmission of its simple creed. During the dark ages of ferment, migration, and strife which followed, the monuments of antique culture, erudition, knowledge were engulfed. What demand could there have been for the multiplying arts in that period of dense ignorance, of ceaseless struggle for life itself, for the bare necessities of life, for merely endurable conditions? The Church, the only institution of stability in this sea of unrest, became the repository of whatever remained of tradition and erudition,--mysteries, these, to be jealously guarded and held as a privilege of the clergy.