78 Mr Sang on some prevailing misconceptions 



the passing events, and turning, with his colleagues, to the yet 

 unsealed heights, he will emulously pursue the career of dis- 

 covery. The present is a spirit-stirring time ; on all hands 

 have discoverers been at work ; from north and south has the 

 hitherto unpassed barrier been assailed, and already have the 

 signals of the workmen on either side been descried by their 

 fellow-labourers. Elated by the prospect of speedy success, 

 they now redouble their exertions, and expect ere long to re- 

 assemble on a higher platform. The science of mechanics has 

 long reared its head proudly over its fellows. Under its effi- 

 cient guidance, its indefatigable votaries have estimated the 

 weights and motions of the heavenly bodies, and carried into 

 the highest department of the science an exactness almost su- 

 perhuman. Now, however, the sciences of chemistry, galva- 

 nism, and magnetism, advance rapidly to take their stations by 

 its side, and promise to rescue from the charge of inconsistency 

 the great laws of mechanics. 



The precision which reason assigns to mechanical phenome- 

 na, the precision which these phenomena exhibit when the pla- 

 nets, launched in unfilled space, perform their mighty evolu- 

 tions, fails us, when we lower our contemplations to terrestrial 

 objects. Here the perfection of nature seems to be marred, the 

 traces of absolute exactitude to be effaced, as if some evil ge- 

 nius had thwarted the Almighty in his design, and sowed con- 

 fusion where order was intended. All motions on the surface 

 of the earth are soon extinguished, and there was no wonder 

 that men, in the infancy of science, drew the conclusion that 

 matter possessed a reluctancy to move. It required a mind 

 of no common energy to burst the shackles which education 

 and early experience had combined to rivet, and to oppose its 

 solitary strength to the bigotry of false religion and false phi- 

 losophy. Unaided, Galileo long maintained the contest, and, 

 although at last the man fell, his doctrine was victorious. Since 

 that time friction has been recognised as the antagonist princi- 

 ple, which opposes, and invariably succeeds in extinguishing, 

 motion, which creates errors in the results, and uncertainty in 

 the practice of mechanical operations. Far, however, from 

 being the cause of the imperfection of machines, friction is es- 

 sential to their very existence. Not a fastening would be se- 



