ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 153 



new inventions.* These may be quite distinct in their character 

 from the original invention to which they indirectly owe their origin. 

 They are related to it only as means to supply some want to which 

 it has given birth. I shall not pursue this branch of the subject. 

 Illustrations will occur to all. There is hardly a branch of industry 

 that has not felt the effect of inventions based upon wants created 

 by the introduction of petroleum, or the general use of the tele- 

 phone. Wood-working, mining, transportation by land and sea — 

 all the avocations of men — have felt their influence, have found 

 wants engendered by their use, and improvements have been made 

 to meet these wants. The wants of primitive man were limited, 

 and his inventions were accordingly few. As wants increased in 

 number and intensity, inventions multiplied, and the numberless 

 wants of modern civilized life are only paralleled by its numberless 

 arts and expedients. 



I set it down as a fifth proposition: I nveiitions always generate 

 wants, and these wants generate other invetitions. 



A sixth proposition \?,t\\Viit\\Q invention of toots and implements pro- 

 ceeds by specialization. This is true to a certain extent of all arts, 

 though perhaps not a universal truth regarding all invention. It 

 results, as will be apparent on reflection, from the last proposition. 

 A single tool may have a great variety of uses, but, if there is a suffi- 

 cient requirement, men will not long be contented with one tool for 

 those uses for which it is least convenient. It will be reserved for 

 that to which it is best adapted, and other forms will be devised 

 better suited for special uses; possibly the parent type may be found 

 inferior fo-r all uses to some of its modified forms, and it may, on 

 the principle of the survival of the fittest, become obsolete. Look' 

 at the variety of tools on a joiner's bench, chisels, planes, saws, 

 each especially adapted for its particular work, but all pointing 

 back to a time when there was but one form of chisel, or plane, or 

 saw. The "jack-plane" and "long-jointer" may each be made to 

 perform the work of the other, but they do it very imperfectly. 

 The primitive bench plane was like neither, but was the type of 



* A curious instance of this is brought to my attention while writing this paper. 

 In consequence of the expiration of the earlier patents on roller-skates, a great 

 impetus has been given to their manufacture, the result being the exhaustion of 

 the world's stock of boxwood of certain sizes used for rollers. And to supply 

 the want so created hundreds of people are trying to invent a suitable and cheap 

 substitute for boxwood for this purpose. 



