Page:The Kinematics of Machinery.djvu/458

 CHAPTER XI.

ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE CLEMENTS OF MACHINERY.

106.

The Machine as a Combination of Constructive Elements.

HAVING- in the foregoing chapters considered the nature of the mechanisms of which machines consist, we must now proceed to examine the separate pieces by the combination of which they are actually constructed. Although this may appear at first sight a return to matters already investigated, it is in reality ac other step forwards upon the road which we have already marked out for ourselves. For it is to a certain extent more difficult to understand the machine in the form in which it actually stands before us than to comprehend the abstract representations by which, so far, we have replaced its constructive complexity. It was necessary that our general notions as to its essential nature should be made distinct, partly indeed re-made, before we could attempt to systematise the complex forms of its single pieces, or distinguish between their fundamental and accidental properties. This problem is indeed by no means a simple one ; we shall not wonder, when we have arrived at its full solution, that it has required such long and careful preparation. It was only when chemical science had