2 88 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the ancients had almost no knowledge of machinery. Water power was 

 called into requisition to a limited extent, but the main reliance was on 

 the muscular force of man and beast. In the East and in Egypt, the 

 potentates tried to impress their contemporaries and posterity by the 

 vastness of their structures ; the artistic sense of the Greeks led them to 

 make only such objects as were beautiful. But even the Eomans who 

 were intensely practical in most things never constructed labor-saving 

 machinery. It is no explanation of the fact to say that actual or virtual 

 slavery was the cause of this lack of enterprise. The same conditions 

 prevailed throughout the Middle Age after slavery had been to a con- 

 siderable extent abolished. Machinery can hardly be said to antedate 

 the era of steam. Although time-pieces can not properly be called ma- 

 chines, their construction requires a knowledge and appreciation of the 

 mechanical powers. It is in strict conformity to the law of progress 

 that water-power which had been in use for purposes of propulsion for 

 thousands of years should also be employed in the manufacture of time- 

 pieces. 



We need to be often reminded that the phrase " to save time " is one 

 of the most frequently misapplied in our language. If we can cross an 

 ocean or a continent in five days instead of the fifty formerly required, 

 where have we saved any time, if we make no good use of the forty-five 

 we are supposed to have saved? If we can converse with a person ten 

 miles or a hundred or even a thousand miles distant without stepping 

 out of doors, where is anything gained if we have nothing to say that is 

 worth saying? If by means of so-called labor-saving machinery we are 

 provided with a thousand pages to read for every one that was within 

 easy reach of our grandfathers, how are we better off if very little of it 

 is worth reading ? We are losing rather than saving time in the opera- 

 tion. The truth is that nothing worth doing has ever been done in a 

 hurry. Almost all the great discoveries and inventions that have really 

 benefited mankind are the result of much patient thought and investi- 

 gation and experiment. The same is true of every work of art, whether 

 pictorial or plastic. After they have become public property their use 

 is a mere matter of routine and imitation. The more time we " save " 

 the less we seem to have. The more we rely on machinery to do our work, 

 the more nearly we become machines ourselves. Even our educational 

 processes have largely degenerated into mere mechanical routine. Each 

 pupil and student is taught to do what he has seen others do. Most of 

 our young people are advised to transform themselves into living cash- 

 registers as early as possible, although the coins they handle are for the 

 most part either counterfeit or of small value. 



