490 Prof. Helmholtz on the Interaction of Natural Forces. 



artist, which moved all its fiugers correctly ; the writing boy of 

 the older, and the pianoforte player of the younger Droz; which 

 latter, when performing, followed its hands \\{i\\ its eyes, and at 

 the conclusion of the piece bowed courteously to the audience. 

 That men like those mentioned, whose talent might bear com- 

 parison with the most inventive heads of the present age, should 

 spend so much time in the construction of these figures which 

 we at present regard as the merest trifles, woidd be incompre- 

 hensible, if they had not hoped in solemn earnest to solve a great 

 problem. The writing boy of the elder Droz was publicly ex- 

 hibited in Germany some years ago. Its wheelwork is so com- 

 plicated, that no ordinary head would be sufficient to decipher 

 its manner of action. When, however, we are informed that 

 this boy and its constructor, being suspected of the black art, 

 lay for a time in the Spanish Inquisition, and with difficulty 

 obtained their freedom, we may infer that in those days even 

 such a toy appeared great enough to excite doubts as to its natural 

 origin. And though these artists may not have hoped to breathe 

 into the creature of their ingenuity a soul gifted with moral 

 completeness, still there were many who would be willing to 

 dispense with the moral qualities of their servants, if at the same 

 time their immoral qualities could also be got rid of; and accept, 

 instead of the mutability of flesh and bones, services which should 

 combine the regularity of a machine with the durability of brass 

 and steel. The object, therefore, which the inventive genius of 

 the past century placed before it with the fvdlest earnestness, 

 and not as a piece of amusement merely, was boldly chosen, and 

 was followed up with an expenditure of sagacity which has con- 

 tributed not a little to enrich the mechanical experience which a 

 later time knew how to take advantage of. We no longer seek to 

 build machines which shall fulfil the thousand services required 

 of one man, but desire, on the contrary, that a machine shall 

 perform one service, but shall occupy in doing it the place of a 

 thousand men. 



From these efforts to imitate living creatures, another idea, 

 also by a misunderstanding, seems to have developed itself, which, 

 as it were, formed the new philosopher's stone of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries. It was now the endeavour to con- 

 struct a perpetual motion. Under this term was understood a 

 machine, which, without being wound u]), without consuming in 

 the working of it falling water, wind, or any other natural force, 

 should still continue in motion, the motive power being perpe- 

 tually supplied by the machine itself. Beasts and human beings 

 seemed to correspond to the idea of such an apparatus, for they 

 moved themselves energetically and incessantly as long as they 

 lived, and were never wound up; nobody set them in motion. 



