The Man and the PouibUukt 41 



illy, the thing which we have thought out must 

 be constructed and we must try to make it work. 



A/ urate Records of Discoveries and Im- 



provements. There is one more point, the real 

 value of which we do not appreciate, and that is 

 the writing down of the thing uhuh has been dis- 

 covered so that other men will not have to spend 

 time in making the same discovery but can learn 

 about it and go forward that much more speedily. 

 When Newton discovered the law of gravitation 

 wrote it down for us, it was passed on to 

 thousands and thousands of young men who were 

 becoming educated so that they would be able to 

 start their experimenting at the point where New- 

 ton was obliged to leave off. That is the real 

 reason why we have been able to develop our 

 Jcrful system of producing useful things and 

 why the world can now support a population many 

 times larger than that of a few centuries ago in 

 greater comfort than the kings of those days were 

 able to obtain. 



Learning from Defects. A friend of mine, 

 who is the head of a rather famous school of art, 

 says that "beauty is the strictest usefulness." 

 What he means is, that, when something has been 

 made so perfect that there is nothing about it that 

 is not necessary to its usefulness, it becomes beau- 

 tiful. I am inclined to agree with him, for I know 

 that simplicity is the ideal of the thinker in indus- 

 No machine was ever built that was not, at 

 Hrst, clumsy and crude and complicated in its move- 



