and the greatest of its builders and distributors.  His inventions were all directed to the improvement of its details, and his labors to its introduction and its application to the myriad tasks awaiting it.  By the hands of Watt it was made to pump water, to spin, to weave, to drive every mill; and he it was who gave it the form demanded by Stephenson, by Fulton, by the whole industrial world, for use on railway and steamboat, and in mill and factory, throughout the civilized countries of the globe.  It was this great mechanic who showed how it might be made to do its work with least expense, with highest efficiency, with greatest regularity, with utmost concentration of power.

The grand secret of his success was historical and economic, as much as scientific and mechanical.  He brought out his inventions just when the world was economically and historically ready for them.  The age of authority was past, that of freedom was come; the period of political and ecclesiastical tyranny was gone by, and that of the spontaneous development of man was arrived.  The great invention was offered to a world ready and needing it, and, more than all, competent, for the first time in history, to make and use it.

James Watt was himself a product of the modern scientific spirit.  He was a man so constituted mentally that he could apply scientific methods to problems which his logical and clairvoyant mind could readily and exactly formulate the instant he was led to their consideration in the natural course of his progress.  He was the ideal great inventor and mechanic.  With inventive genius he combined strong common sense—­not always a quality distinguishing the inventor—­clear perception, breadth of view, and scientific method and spirit in the treatment of every question.  His natural talent was re-enforced by an experience and an environment which led him to develop these ways and this mental habit.  His trade was that of an instrument maker, his position was that of custodian and repairer of the apparatus of Glasgow University.  He had for his daily companions and stimulus the great men and ozonized atmosphere of that famous institution.  He kept pace with advancing science, and was imbued, both naturally and through contact with its promoters, with that ambition and those aspirations which are the life element of all progress, whether scientific or other.  He was aware of the nature of the problems seeking solution at the time, and familiar with the state of his own art and that of the great mechanicians about him.  Everything was favorable to his progress, so soon as he should be given an opportunity to take a step in advance and to come into sight at the front.  The man and the time were both ready, and all conditions, internal and external, social and personal, were favorable to his development.