INFLUENCE OF INVENTIONS ON CIVILIZATION. 475 



of Mohammed and the rise of his religion, of the consequences which 

 followed the establishment of great empires like that of Charlemagne, 

 or of the results of geographical discovery, as in the discovery of 

 America or of the passage to India. 



I am well aware of the difficulty of comparing the magnitude or 

 importance of such things, for instance, as the art of printing, the 

 steam-engine, or the railway or telegraph, with a new form of religion, 

 or the establishment or overthrow of an empire, or the introduction of 

 new forms of government. One man may attach much higher impor- 

 tance to some of these things than another would do, and a very much 

 higher importance to them at one period of his life than at another. 



It may seem absurd to some persons to make any comparison, for 

 instance, between the benefits flowing from the introduction of Sabbath- 

 schools and those which have followed the invention of friction-matches; 

 between the results due to the invention of spectacles and the conse- 

 quences which followed the Reformation. And yet it is easy to see 

 that each of these things must have had an important influence upon 

 the physical, social, and moral condition of men, upon their habits of 

 thought and of living, and upon their comfort and happiness. There 

 is, therefore, some just relation between the value of these things to 

 men, and it will not be unprofitable to spend a little time in consider- 

 ing how much we owe to inventors for what we have and what we are. 



It is my purpose this evening to briefly bring into view, if I can, 

 the service which inventors have rendered the world, and the part 

 which inventions play in the moral and social condition of man. I 

 shall point out in some cases the extreme simplicity of the inventions, 

 in others the wonderful results which have flowed from them. 



I shall refer not merely to what are called great inventions, but to 

 some which seem to be very small. I shall very likely speak of noth- 

 ing with which you are not all more or less familiar, but I may possi- 

 bly suggest reflections which are interesting but which seldom come 

 to our minds, for the very reason that we are so familiar with the 

 things to which they relate ; and I think that I may be able to show 

 that there are no other men to whom the world is so much indebted 

 as to its inventors, no others who so well merit its honors and deserve 

 its gratitude. 



We do not often stop to think how little man has or enjoys that 

 is not the fruit of invention. Things which man has long had we 

 have ceased to think of as inventions, and we are apt to apply that 

 term only to modern things— to things the origin of which we know. 

 Yet it will be hard for any of us to name anything which we use or 

 enjoy which is not an invention, or the subject of an invention, in its 

 adaptation to our use. 



The air we breathe and the water we drink are provided by Na- 

 ture. But we drink but very little water except from a cup or vessel 

 of some kind, which is a human invention. Even if w^e drink from 



