244 Remarks on the History of Inventions. 



lequire to be manufactured before they can conveniently be applied to liis 

 purposes. For the shaping a trunk of a tree into pieces of timber is a 

 species of uianufacturCj and this is almost universal : now this is an object 

 which man is quite unable to accomplish by any natural instruments he 

 possesses. The human hand is indeed itself the most admirable of all 

 animal organs, and is strictly co-ordinate with human reason, to which it 

 gives eflect ; but still with the hand alone man can neither pluck up a tree 

 by its roots, nor shape it should he find it accidentally fallen. The hand 

 has been well described by Galen as the instrument effective of all other 

 instruments ; and it is in this that the great superiority of man consists. 

 He is not limited to the single range of a limited supply of specific natural 

 organs, but has the power of inventing with his mind, and fabricating with 

 his hand, whatsoever instruments he may require ; he is therefore, as the 

 Greek tragedian speaks, TravroTropoQ, having a contrivance for every 

 thing. 



The most essential tools are those of cutting, the knife and the axe. 

 The rudest savages, unacquainted with the use of metals, employ for this 

 purpose sharp slices of hard stone, to which by attrition they impart the 

 forms they need. The teeth of the shark and other bones are occasionally 

 employed for like purposes ; yet with rude and imperfect instruments like 

 these, the Polynesian islander is enabled to fell trees, to shape canoes, and 

 to adorn his weapons with very elaborate carving ; in this process he is 

 assisted by files constructed of rough stones. Masses of stone also supply 

 to all savage nations obvious substitutes for hammers and wedges. The 

 introduction of iron afforded the best conceivable material for these imple- 

 ments ; and that most convenient implement for dividing timber, the 

 toothed saw, seems speedily to have ensued. We find more, which the 

 Septuagint and all other translators have thus rendered, in the book of 

 Chronicles I. xx. 3 ; and Hesiod mentions sawn timber;* but here there 

 is nothing to distinguish from any other implement of cleavage. In So- 



* The planks of shittim wooil employed in the construction of the tahernacle (Ex- 

 odus xxvi., XXXV.), are denominated by a term only expressive of their being com- 

 pacted together, aRsiM, and may have been formed by hewing them smooth, as 

 easily, though less oeconomically, as by an instrument like the saw. Homer never 

 mentions the saw, though he gives a particular description, in the fifth Odyssey, of 

 the whole proceeding of Ulvsses, in felling and fashioning the timber to construct 

 the vessel in which he left the isle of Calypso, for which the divine nymph herself 

 furnished all the requisite tools, which of course were of the best description known 

 to the poet; these were a large double-bladed hatchet, TrtXtKvg, for felling the tim- 

 ber, a smaller axe for shaping and polishing, (TKnrapvog, instruments for boring, 

 TcptTpa, and a carpenter's square, oTaji]!'. These were made of brass ; for iron, 

 though known in the time of Homer, appears from the greater difficulty of reducing 

 it, to have been very sparingly employed, and only for smaller implements. We 

 shall have occasion to return to this passage, when we come to speak of naval archi- 

 tecture. 



