Page:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu/22

 it takes many very educated people to make discoveries and inventions; still, these educated people are only material – tools – used for making inventions. But what force drives their toilsome, often frustrated efforts? What thread clews these people through these recondite areas of research hitherto untraversed by the human mind?

The question is a good one. It truly is interesting what drives a person to ever new efforts – what points his way to an unknown idea? But the answer is very simple: man is driven to every kind of effort, including discovery and invention, by needs; and the thread that guides him is observation: attentive examination of the works of nature and of man.

I have said that the mainspring of all discoveries and inventions is needs. Indeed, is there any work of man that does not satisfy a need? We build railroads because we need rapid transportation; we build clocks because we need to measure time; we build sewing machines because the speed of human hands does not suffice us. We abandon home and family and depart for distant lands because we are excited by curiosity to see what lies elsewhere. We forsake the society of people and spend long hours in exhausting study because we are driven by a hunger for knowledge, by a desire to solve the challenges that are constantly thrown up by the world and by life!

Needs never cease; on the contrary, they are always growing. While the pauper thinks about a piece of bread for lunch, the rich man thinks about wine after lunch. The foot traveler dreams of a rudimentary cart; the railroad passenger demands a heater. The infant is cramped in its cradle; the adult man is cramped in