Remarks on the History of Inventions. 243 



VII. The arts directed to extend man's power of locomotion on liis own 

 element, by the employment of liorses and chariots, and by the construc- 

 tion of roads and bridges j and on the water by the successive vessels em- 

 ployed in navigation, may well close our survey of the necessary arts of 

 human life. 



Another large field would remain, were we to undertake the considera- 

 tion of the intellectual and ornamental arts and sciences, — alphabetic 

 writing, music, painting, sculpture, the instruments employed in astronomy, 

 and the like; but we guess (as the Americans would say) that our readers 

 and ourselves will be well weary of our present task, without undertaking 

 this additional investigation ; and on these subjects almost every general 

 treatise on the several arts and sciences will be found to contain a sufficient 

 history of the progress of each. 



In tracing under the above heads the gradual development of the most 

 essential arts, we shall first view them as they exist in a- rudimental state, 

 under a savage condition of society, as exemplified among the Polynesian 

 islanders, and the Esquimaux. Of the earliest periods of civilization, the 

 Bible presents our only record : brief as the narratives there preserved are, 

 we shall yet find many hints applica1)le to our inquiry scattered through 

 those sacred pages, which are richly stored with the most various informa- 

 tion, in order, as it were, to allure us to their more frequent perusal. With 

 reference to the state of the arts in the heroical ages of classical antiquity, 

 we find an inexhaustible treasury of information in the Homeric poems, 

 which are no less interesting to the archaeologist, from their minute details 

 of all the usages of that distant day, than to the poet, from the sublimity of 

 their composition. Such are the sources we shall principally consult as to 

 the first steps in the progress of invention. 



From the great extent of the subject, our survey will necessarily be very 

 rapid; but still it is iioped sufficient to place distinctly before the mind 

 of the reader the various materials which it would be the business of a 

 more elaborate and voluminous treatise fully to work out in detail. A 

 sufficient specimen of the manner in which it is proposed to execute this 

 design, will be found in the following introductory article. 



I. On the employment of artificial tools to direct and assist the powers 

 of man ; and his availing himself of other natural moving powers. 



Man has been justly defined to be a being distinguished from other ani- 

 mals, by accomplishing almost every operation which he undertakes by the 

 intervention of artificial instruments ; while the other animal races, even 

 those which do possess a kind of arts, as beavers in the fabrication of their 

 dams and huts, birds in the construction of their nests, and various species 

 of insects in that of their cells, use their materials in the same natural state 

 in which they find them ; and require no other instruments for their ar- 

 rangement than the organs with which nature has furnished their mouths 

 and extremities : but man seldom uses his materials in a rude state ; they 



