302 M. Arago on Machinery considered in Belation 



Let us now, however, leave these details, and come to the 

 essential merits of the question. " We must not," said Marcus 

 Aurelius, " receive the opinions of our fathei's, as do mere 

 infants, for the simple reason that our parents held them." 

 This assuredly just maxim should not at the same time pre- 

 vent us from thinking, or, at all events, from presuming, that 

 those opinions, concerning which no objection has been raised 

 since the origin of society, are conformable both to reason 

 and general interest. Well, then, upon the opinion so much 

 debated concerning the utility of machinery, what were the 

 unanimous sentiments of antiquity ? Its ingenious mytho- 

 logy will inform us. The founders of empires, the first of 

 legislators, the conquerors of those tyrants who oppressed 

 their country, received the qualified title of demi-gods ; and it 

 was among these same gods that were placed the inventors of 

 the spade, the sickle, and the plough. 



But instantly, I hear some of our adversaries declaiming about 

 the extreme simplicity of the instruments I have cited, — refus- 

 ingthem the name of machines, — designating them mere tools, 

 and obstinately entrenching themselves behind this distinction. 

 To this we might reply, that such a distinction is puerile ; 

 and that it is impossible to say with precision where the tool 

 ends, and the machine begins. It is of more importance, how- 

 ever, to remark, that the murmurers against machines have 

 never said one word of their greater or less degree of complica- 

 tion. If they reject them, it is because, by their means, one work- 

 m;ui performs the labour of many ; and will they venture to 

 maintain that a knife, a gimlet, a file, or a saw, does not give 

 a marvellous facility of action to the man who uses them ; and 

 that his hand, so supplied, can do the work of many hands 

 armed only with their nails. 



Those labourers were not arrested by this sophistical distinc- 

 tion between tools and machinery, who, seduced by the execra- 

 ble theories of some of their pretended friends,, ran through 

 certain counties of England, in the year 1830, vociferating 

 Death to machinery ! Rigorous logicians, they broke the sickle 

 in the farm-yard, destined for reaping, the flail employed in 

 thrashing, and the sieve with which the grain was cleaned. 

 Who can deny, that the sickle, the flail, and the sieve are, 

 in truth, means for abridging labour I Not even the spade, 



