BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. 209 



some metals or metalloids ; the recent revival of electric 

 lighting ; nay, even the weather forecasts which truly de- 

 served the reproach of being " unscientific " when they 

 were started by an old Jack tar, Fitzroy all these could 

 be mentioned as instances in point. Of course, we have 

 a number of cases in which the discovery, or the inven- 

 tion, was a mere application of a scientific law (cases like 

 '.he discovery of the planet Neptune), but in the immense 

 majority of cases the discovery, or the invention, is un- 

 scientific to begin with. It belongs much more to the 

 domain of art art taking the precedence over science, 

 as Helmholtz has so well shown in one of his popular 

 lectures and only after the invention has been made, 

 science comes to interpret it It is obvious that each 

 invention avails itself of the previously accumulated 

 knowledge and modes of thought ; but in most cases it 

 makes a start in advance upon what is known ; it makes 

 a leap in the unknown, and thus opens a quite new 

 series of facts for investigation. This character of in- 

 vention, which is to make a start in advance of former 

 knowledge, instead of merely applying a law, makes it 

 identical, as to the processes of mind, with discovery ; 

 and, therefore, people who are slow in invention are also 

 slow in discovery. 



In most cases, the inventor, however inspired by the 

 general state of science at a given moment, starts with a 

 very few settled facts at his disposal. The scientific 

 facts taken into account for inventing the steam-engine, 

 or the telegraph, or the phonograph were strikingly 

 elementary. So that we can affirm that what we 

 presently know is already sufficient for resolving any of 

 the great problems which stand in the order of the day 

 prime-motors without the use of steam, the storage 

 of energy, the transmission of force, or the flying- 

 machine. If these problems are not yet solved, it is 

 merely because of the want of inventive genius, the 

 scarcity of educated men endowed with it, and the 



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