Science and Industry 



chiefly conducted by persons who had no utilitarian 

 ends to serve, a learned or religious class, engaged 

 in philosophical or physical research which had 

 no direct or appreciable bearing on the arts of 

 industry. Comte well drew attention to the fact 

 that the sciences were cultivated in the inverse order 

 of their value to man, being concerned primarily 

 with the exercise of the faculties of man, and with 

 the maintenance of spiritual and temporal authority 

 by decorative and mysterious erudition. 



While intelligence and curiosity were directed 

 into these non-utilitarian channels, industry was 

 regarded by those who took part in it as a routine 

 occupation, fixed in methods and restricted in 

 locality, a traditional and largely hereditary means 

 of livelihood. The modern business spirit, that 

 which impels a man to enter an industry as a 

 profitable enterprise, was almost wholly absent from 

 manufacture. For the ordinary " base mechanic " 

 the stimulus to invention was entirely lacking ; 

 law, custom, the limitation of market, and a score 

 of other obstacles beset the profitable application 

 of any improvement in production. Not until the 

 rise of the modern entrepreneur with the modern 

 liberty of manufacture and of market, was any 

 considerable pace of industrial progress feasible. 

 Doubtless many rudimentary ideas germinated 

 from time to time in the minds of craftsmen, 

 but until the modern business man arose to 

 exploit them nothing came of them. It is this 

 all-important function of the business-man or 

 entrepreneur that characterises the period of the 



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