46 SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL STUDIES. 



same may be said in respect of plastic art. whose 

 representatives regarded and in part, I believe, still 

 regard it beneath their dignity to employ a part of 

 their creative power for the elevation of industrial art. 

 Through my activity in the Polytechnic Society 

 I arrived at the conviction that scientific knowledge 

 and scientific methods of investigation are capable 

 of developing technology to a degree far beyond 

 anything that can be foreseen. It further had the 

 advantage of making me personally acquainted with 

 Berlin manufacturers, and of affording me personally 

 an insight into the achievments and defects of the 



o 



industry of the time. My advice was often sought 

 by manufacturers, and I thereby became acquainted 

 with the contrivances employed and the modes of 

 working. It became clear to me that the industrial 

 arts cannot advance by sudden leaps, as has often 

 been possible to science through the fruitful ideas of 

 a few remarkable men. A technical invention only 

 obtains value and importance if technology itself has 

 so far progressed, that the invention is a practical 

 one and supplies a need. Hence one so often sees 

 the most considerable inventions unutilized for decermia, 

 until all at once their great importance is recognised, 

 their hour having arrived. -~7 



Of the scientific-technical questions which at that 

 time especially occupied me, and at the same time 

 gave occasion to my first literary labours, the first 

 owed its origin to a communication in a letter of 

 my brother William with respect to an interesting 



