INTERDEPENDENCE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 229 



the world, implying cochineal-culture, logwood-cutting, in 

 digo-growing ; there are the implements used by the pro 

 ducers of cotton, the gins by which it is cleaned, the elab 

 orate machines by which it is spun : there are the vessels 

 in which cotton is imported, with the building-slips, the 

 rope-yards, the sail-cloth factories, the anchor-forges, need 

 ful for making them ; and besides all these directly neces 

 sary antecedents, each of them involving many others, 

 there are the institutions which have developed the requi 

 site intelligence, the printing and publishing arrangements 

 which have spread the necessary information, the social or 

 ganization which has rendered possible such a complex co 

 operation of agencies. 



Further analysis would show that the many arts thus 

 concerned in the economical production of a child s frock, 

 have each of them been brought to its present efficiency 

 by slow steps which the other arts have aided ; and that 

 from the beginning this reciprocity has been ever on the 

 increase. It needs but on the one hand to consider how 

 utterly impossible it is for the savage, even with ore and 

 coal ready, to produce so simple a thing as an iron hatchet ; 

 and then to consider, on the other hand, that it would have 

 been impracticable among ourselves, even a century ago, 

 to raise the tubes of the Britannia bridge from lack of the 

 hydraulic press ; to at once see how mutually dependent 

 are the arts, and how all must advance that each may ad 

 vance. Well, the sciences are involved with each other 

 iu just the same manner. They are, in fact, inextricably 

 woven into this same complex web of the arts ; and are 

 only conventionally independent of it. Originally the two 

 were one. How to fix the religious festivals ; when to sow : 

 how to weigh commodities ; and in what manner to meas 

 ure ground ; were the purely practical questions out of 

 which arose astronomy, mechanics, geometry. Since then 

 there has been a perpetual inosculation of the sciences and 



