26 CARNOT. 



To give an idea of its importance to the generality of 

 the world, I should be inclined to say, notwithstanding 

 the fantastic appearance of the comparison, that Carnot 

 has extended to the material world a proverb whose 

 truth was only established, before his time, in the moral 

 world ; that " much noise * and little work " is a saying 

 henceforth quite as applicable to the effective labours of 

 machines, as to the enterprises of certain individuals 

 whose petulance gives rise to the hope of wonders des- 

 tined not to be realized. In addressing men of learning, 

 I would beg them to distinguish carefully between the 

 invention of the material organs by whose aid forces 

 transmit their action from one point to another, and the 

 discovery of those primordial truths which are applicable 

 indistinctively to all imaginable systems ; I will endeav- 

 our to show that in this first respect the ancients were 

 perhaps not inferior to us. The screw of Archimedes, 

 the series of toothed wheels of Ctesibius, the hydrostatic 

 fountains of Heron of Alexandria, the steam rotating 

 machine of the same engineer, a great number of war- 

 like machines, and amongst them the balista, might all be 

 brought forward to strengthen my view. In the field of 

 theoretical truths, on the contrary, the preponderance of 

 the moderns would show itself incontestable.f There 

 we should see successively, in all their brilliancy, in Hol- 



* The proverb does not fit at all neatly, unless "noise " be taken 

 to mean "irregularity;" some good machines are very noisy. 

 Translator. 



t The question is rather unfairly stated against the ancients; for 

 Arago speaks as if Ai'chimedes, &c., had only made their machines, 

 and not been masters of the principles, which involved as much pri- 

 mordial truth as any other discoveries. A fairer distinction seems to 

 be, that the moderns launched out into realms where theory alone 

 could point out the way; the ancients were led on by experiment and 

 observation. Translator. 



