Page:Preparation of the Child for Science.djvu/12

8 mechanical appliances jbr comfort and pleasure, but by the evolution of a Race gifted with powers of intellectual enjoyment, larger than those of man as he now exists. He made a special study of the faculty which he called Genius and the conditions of its orderly devel- opment. By Genius he evidently meant, chiefly, the power of seeing truth at first hand. The MS. of his work was entrusted to a friend who is said to have lost it. The rough notes foy the book in Wedgwood's handwriting, with a fair copy of one or two of the chapters, were found in 1883. Among the papers was a scrap on which was written, in a shaking hand, the sentence : — ' How exhilarating is the thought that if, by the labour of my whole life, I can add one idea to the stock of those concerning education, my life has been well spent.'

. By comparing European mathematical processes with certain ideas about the development of human faculty derived from Asiatic sages, he was able to realize the nature of some thought-processes so vividly as to conceive, in imagination, what may almost be called an Automatic Thinker of iron and brass. His calculating machine, if completed, would sometimes have rung a warning bell and put up a signal: — 'More data wanted;' and oc-