ABSTRACT
‘The ancients’, says Dr. Arbuthnot, i ‘had more occasion for mechanics in the art of war, than we have; gunpowder readily producing a force far exceeding all the engines they had contrived for battery. And this, I reckon, has lost us a good occasion of improving our mechanics; the cunning of mankind never exerting itself so much as in their arts of destroying one another’. Since Arbuthnot’s age the desire of gain has produced greater improvements in mechanics than were ever called forth by the desire of conquest. And yet the great inventions of the world have arisen from a worthier origin than either; they have generally been the work of quiet, unambitious, unworldly men, pursuing some favourite branch of science, patiently, for its own sake.
