Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/263

 older method of production has left its special mark, it prevents that method indeed from being distinctly understood. The way in which the modern machine is designed is different, lying as it does from the beginning in the hands of experienced and more or less scientific men. Here some things at least, if not a large number, are clearly and deliberately grasped. Here we do not so much see the improvement of old and defective arrangements as the bringing into existence of new ones, enabling the machine to perform operations which had previously been considered quite beyond its province. The mechanism, although new, is presented to us complete,—a faultlessly constrained and closed system of bodies,—ready to be put to practical proof; as we see, for instance, in sewing-machines, in the new guns and projectiles, and so on. There can be no doubt that in some of these there are tokens of a new tendency, a very striking one, very distinctly differing from that which gave us the older machines. The difference somewhat resembles that between the processes of integration and differentiation. Formerly the fundamental idea of alteration or extension was, a word which says much in itself of the nature of the process. Now, on the other hand, we have a direct production of new things, a sudden bringing into being of so far complete machines. We see the beginnings of a perception which will some day apparently be universal among those who have to do with all classes of machinery. Upon this growing sense I believe that our polytechnic machine-instruction should act with increasing certainty. The nature of men's talents meanwhile remains as a whole unaltered. The idea must be developed in each individual afresh microkosmically from its beginning onwards. For this reason, and also because incomplete solutions may still be real solutions, the existing antagonism between pair- and force-closure will never become quite extinct.

The whole inner nature of the machine is, as our investigations have gradually made clear, the result of a systematic restriction; its completeness indicates the increasingly skilful constrainment of motion until all indefiniteness is entirely removed. Mankind has worked for ages in developing this limitation. If we look for a parallel to it elsewhere we may find it in the great problem of human civilization. In this the development of machinery forms indeed but one factor, but its outline is sufficiently distinct to