Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/30

8 a whole series of mechanical and kinematic inventions, and brought the machine in a short time to a high degree of completeness, enriching at the same time all the kindred realms of knowledge. From that time onward the rapidly extending employment of the machine and its continual development, improvements from a thousand heads and a thousand hands, have brought it to its present perfection, and made it absolutely the common property of all.

I have entirely omitted in this hurried sketch what Humboldt called the "horrible wrangling about priority." From such a summary review we might almost be led to believe in the entirely spontaneous unfolding of ideas, were it not that each separate energetic step forward shows us the grasp of more distinguished endowments, and convinces us afresh of the importance of genius in the further growth of the race. Throughout the whole, however, we can discern the one idea developing itself out of the other, like the leaf from the bud or the fruit from the blossom; just as throughout nature everywhere each new creation is developed from those which have preceded it.

I believe I have shown in the preceding paragraphs that a more or less logical process of thought is included in every invention. The less visible this is from outside, the higher stands our admiration of the inventor,—who earns also the more recognition the less the aiding and connecting links of thought have been worked out ready to his hand. To-day, when scientific aids are so abundant in every branch of technical work, progressions of the greatest importance are frequently made without receiving any such high recognition as in former times. Everything lies so clearly and simply before us, that it can be reached and comprehended by commonplace intellects. At the same time the relative difference between the work of the commonplace and that of the highly cultivated intellect is even greater than before, and by this may be explained the apparently almost feverish progress made in the regions of technical work. It is not a consequence of any increased capacity for intellectual action in the race, but only of the perfecting and extending of the tools with which the intellect works. These have increased in number just like those in the modern mechanical workshop;—the men who work them remain the same.