Page:Conservationofen00stew.djvu/155

Rh machine—how to say to it, At what rate can you labour? how much work can you turn out in a day? It is necessary, in fact, to have the clearest possible idea of what work is.

Our readers will see from all this that men are not likely to err in their method of measuring work. The principles of measurement have been stamped as it were with a brand into the very heart and brain of humanity. To the employer of machinery or of human labour, a false method of measuring work simply means ruin; he is likely, therefore, to take the greatest possible pains to arrive at accuracy in his determination.

193. Now, amid the crowd of workers smarting from the curse of labour, there rises up every now and then an enthusiast, who seeks to escape by means of an artifice from this insupportable tyranny of work. Why not construct a machine that will go on giving you work without limit without the necessity of being fed in any way. Nature must have some weak point in her armour; there must surely be some way of getting round her; she is only tyrannous on the surface, and in order to stimulate our ingenuity, but will yield with pleasure to the persistence of genius.

Now, what can the man of science say to such an enthusiast? He cannot tell him that he is intimately acquainted with all the forces of Nature, and can prove