The inventive faculty of man tends more directly than any other
intellectual power he possesses to raise him in the scale of creation
above the brutes. Nearly every advance he makes beyond the exercise of
his natural instincts is caused by invention--by that power of the mind
which combines known properties in different ways to obtain new results.
When an Indian clothes himself with the skins of animals, and when
he collects the dried leaves of the forest for his bed, he is either
an original inventor, or he is profiting by the inventions of
others. Those simple contrivances--the first steps in the progress
of invention--are succeeded by the more labored efforts of inventive
genius, such as contriving means of shelter from rain, or from
the heat of the sun, when caves cannot be found to creep into, or
the overhanging foliage fails to afford sufficient covering. The
construction of places of shelter is an imitation of the protection
formed by Nature; and the rudest hut and the most magnificent palaces
have their prototypes in caverns and in the interlacing branches of
trees.
Nature also supplies knowledge of the means by which inventors are
enabled to work. The savage who seizes hold of a broken bough is
in possession of the _lever_, the uses of which he learns by the
facility it affords in moving other objects. He ascends to the top of
a precipice by walking up the sloping hill behind, and he thus becomes
practically acquainted with the principle of the _inclined plane_.
The elements of all the mechanical powers are then at his command, to
be applied by degrees in administering to his wants, as his inventive
faculties, guided by observation and experience, suggest. An accidental
kick against a loose stone shows the action of propulsive force; and
the stone that he has struck with his foot, he learns to throw with his
hand. The bending of the boughs of trees to and fro by the wind teaches
the action of springs; and in the course of time the bow is bent by a
strip of hide, and the relaxation of the spring, after farther bending,
propels the arrow. Observation and imitation thus lead to invention,
and every new invention forms the foundation of further progress.
It has been so with every invention at present known, and must so
continue to the end of time:--"There is nothing new under the sun." Gas
lighting, Steam locomotion, and the Electric Telegraph have each sprung
from some source "old as the hills," though so modified by gradually
progressive changes, that the giant we now see bears no resemblance to
the infant of ages past.
The observation that light particles floating in the air are attracted
by amber when rubbed, which was made known six centuries before the
Christian era, was the origin of the invention by which communications
are now transmitted, with the rapidity of lightning, from one part of
the world to another. There is no apparent relation between effects
so dissimilar; yet the steps of progress can be distinctly traced,
from the attraction of a feather to the development of the electric
telegraph.
Whenever the history of an invention can be thus tracked backward to
its source, it will be found to have advanced to its present state by
progressive steps, each additional advance having been dependent on
the help given by the progress before made. Sometimes these onward
movements are greater and more remarkable than others, and the persons
who made them have become distinguished for their inventive genius,
and are considered the benefactors of mankind; yet they were but the
followers of those who had gone before and shown the way.
Many of the most remarkable inventions are attributable to accidents
noted by observing and inventive minds. Not unfrequently also have
important discoveries of truth been made in endeavouring to establish
error; and new light is being constantly thrown on the path of
invention by unsuccessful experiments.
This view of the means by which inventions originate and are brought
to perfection may appear to detract from the merit of inventors, since
it regards them as founding their conceptions altogether on the works
of others, or on chance. But instead of diminishing their claims to
approbation and reward, it places those claims on a more substantial
foundation than that of abstract original ideas. The man who has the
faculty to perceive that by a different application of well-known
principles he can produce useful effects before unknown, directly
benefits mankind far more than the discoverer of the principles which
had till then lain dormant; and the numerous difficulties which ever
arise before an invention can be practically operative, frequently
afford exercise for reasoning powers of the highest kind, which may
develop new arrangements, that exhibit as much originality and research
as were displayed by the discoverers of the principles on which the
invention depends.
The dependence of every invention on preceding ones produces very
frequently conflicting claims among inventors, who, forgetting how
much they were indebted to others, do not hesitate to charge those,
who make still further improvements, with imitation and piracy. It is,
indeed, sometimes difficult to determine whether the alterations made
in well-known contrivances are, or are not, of sufficient importance
to constitute inventions; and there can be no doubt that there is too
great facility afforded, by the indiscriminate grant of letters patent,
for the establishment of monopolies that often serve to obstruct
further improvements. At the same time, it must be observed that a
very trifling addition or change occasionally gives practical value to
an invention, which had been useless without it. In such cases, though
the individual merit of the inventor is small, the benefit conferred
may be important, and may operate influentially in promoting the
progress of civilization.
Scientific discovery goes hand in hand with invention, and they
mutually assist each other's progress. Every discovery in science
may be applicable to some new purpose, or give greater efficiency to
what is old. Those new and improved instruments and processes provide
science with the means of extending its researches into other fields of
discovery; and thus, as every truth revealed, supplies inventive genius
with fresh matter to mould into new forms, those creations become in
their turn agents in promoting further discoveries.
The action and reaction thus constantly at work, tend to give
accelerating impulse to invention, and are continually enlarging its
sphere of operations. Instead, therefore, of supposing, as some do,
that invention and discovery have nearly reached their limits, there is
more reason to infer that they are only at the commencement of their
careers; and that, great as have been the wonders accomplished by the
applications of science during the first half of the present century,
they will be at least equalled, if not surpassed, by those to be
achieved before its close.