Page:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu/9

 teaches us that discoveries and inventions have not sprung into existence full-blown, but have appeared gradually. Forty years ago, electric telegraphy was unknown; 50 years ago, there were no locomotives; 70 years ago, steamships did not exist; 100 years ago, people [in Europe –Translator] did not eat potatoes; 110 years ago, they did not use spinning machines; 200 years ago, there were no spring-driven clocks; 400 years ago, America was unknown; 450 years ago, printed books did not exist; 600 years ago, candle-making was unknown; 1,200 years ago, the spinning of thread was unknown; still earlier, there was no knowledge of glass, iron, bricks, and so on. The people who lived several thousand years ago in Europe did not know how to build houses but lived in caves, and they did not know how to cultivate fibrous plants or cereals and therefore ate almost exclusively meat and dressed in animal hides. Their weapons were of stone; their saws were notched bones. Today we can hardly conceive of their poverty and of the difficulties with which they had to contend at every step: it is no exaggeration to say that each of us could saw through a steel bar more easily than they could saw through a piece of wood; that the most wretched man today is better off and happier than princes and chiefs were back then.

If we reverse direction from those remote times and move toward our present age, we shall find that with each century the number of discoveries and inventions grew, the people’s lives improved, and their knowledge broadened. This gradual advance of civilized societies, this constant growth in knowledge of the objects that exist in nature, this constant increase in the number of tools and useful materials, is termed progress, or the evolution of civilization.

We may now proceed to considering the benefits that humankind derives from discoveries and inventions. These benefits are incalculable and I have no intention of enumerating them, but I would like to bring attention to just some of them.