ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 165 



US tlie fullest knowledge of all her laws. For this is eurematics in 

 its broadest significance; it is encompassing the laws of nature with 

 material form and compelling matter to do the bidding of psychi- 

 cal energy. 



But evolution does not account for all. There is in invention a 

 synchromism that is almost mysterious. The present is the grand 

 harvest time of all the seed that has been planted by the generations 

 that have preceded us; but why the thoughts of inventive minds 

 appear to move in batallions, all aiming at some common objective, 

 seems at first view almost inexplicable. A given function is demon- 

 strably demanded; a hundred minds set themselves at once, in all 

 parts of the world, to produce the means for its satisfaction. With 

 the almost universal diffusion of information that has come about 

 with the art of printing, even in all languages and tongues, aided 

 by the telegraph and the telephone, who fails to know in all the 

 broad earth to-morrow morning what the chiefest want of to-day 

 has been? Within one month's time from the great flour-dust 

 explosion in the mills of Minneapolis, in May, 1878, there were 

 over thirty inventions made for preventmg the recurrence of such 

 an accident, and all practically effective. Many of them were 

 almost if not quite identical, although made by men having 

 no knowledge even of each others' existence, and in all parts of 

 the world ! So quickly, when a pressing want is known, is the 

 means supplied for staying the same. When the -science of inven- 

 tion has been perfected, and every want has been given a means for 

 its satisfaction, will not the highest type of invention then be the 

 discovery of a new want, latent in the human soul, but never before 

 developed ? 



Another feature of invention noticeable to an attentive observer 

 is the isolation in which an important discovery is often times set. 

 The evolution of the automatic grain binder of this day, from the 

 sickle of Egypt and the Orient, is plain and familiar. To one who 

 has witnessed the devouring knives of this latest type of human 

 genius, hungrily levelling the yellow harvests of the great northwest 

 and tossing the bundled sheaves backward in serried rows upon the 

 stubble, and contrasts its action with that of the reaper in tlie time 

 of Eoaz, how far apart they seem separated ! And so they are, wide 

 centuries apart. But the quick mind of invention anticipated the 

 want almost in the earliest day of the reaper. In the year 1854 two 

 men invented, perfected, reduced to practice, and patented the 



