Because, then, of this mutual inter-dependence we shall give the palm to no individual, but endeavour to show how, step by step, the ship has shaken herself free of entire slavery to the wind, one age helping her a little in her ambition, others sending her forward farther still towards her goal. Chance plays so curious a game with progress. A genius may spring up too early or too late to be appreciated. He may be hailed as a dangerous lunatic or as a benefactor of mankind, according to whether the time was ripe for his appearance. Papin, as we shall see presently, was born out of due season. His fellow-men did not want his steamer, so they smashed it to pieces. Solomon de Caus, who showed that he knew more about the application of steam than anyone who had ever lived, was shut up as a madman, whereas Fulton, another man of rare genius and wonderful fertility of invention, has recently had his centenary celebrated and fêtes in his memory held, lest the recollection of his great gift to mankind should be easily forgotten. But Fulton was just the kind of man to acknowledge his dependence on the work of his predecessors, and, in fact, did this in so many words when he was being denounced by a rival inventor. Desblanc, a Frenchman, pretended that his was the prior invention, but Fulton wisely replied that if the glory of having invented the steamboat belonged to anyone, it belonged not to himself nor to Desblanc, but to the Marquis de Jouffroy, who had obtained a success with his steamer on the Saône twenty years before. And the designers and builders of the _Mauretania_ and _Lusitania_ to-day would be among the first to admit that such achievements as these mammoth ships are but the results of all that has gone before: in other words, it is evolution rather than sudden invention.