200 oolutioii of the 3Iechaitic Arts. 



period, during whicli the trees wore more or less abandoned, 

 the feet placed with the heel bearing firmly on the ground, 

 the erect walking position assumed, and during which calves 

 were being grown on their legs, as the time of adolescence ; 

 and the still later period in which we yet live, as the time 

 of perfecting a manhood not yet perfected. 



This suggestion, it appears to me, furnishes a clew to 

 actual history ; for when we come to consider modern in- 

 vention, we sliall realize the absence, and the need, of a 

 suitable explanation of its genesis as well ; since the con- 

 stantly recurring fact shown in these days is that inventions 

 are not made by the strong, the rich and the powerful, but 

 by those who ai-e seeking to become so by growing out of 

 their subordinated and comparatively weak individual and 

 social position. 



The history of this infancy and adolescence is chiefly 

 written, as we may now believe, in every bone, muscle, 

 nerve, tissue and structure of the human body, including 

 the brain ; and the history of this manhood will be found 

 written in the moral, intellectual and social develojiment of 

 the race, largely in the ages to come, since we are still in a 

 comparatively primitive stage, having as yet merely begun 

 the work of mastering Nature. 



To briefly catalogue, now, the world-shop and its contents, 

 it may be recalled that in previous essays we have had it 

 explained to us how, through the action of the rudimentary 

 forces, the world not only became what we see it in its 

 physical form, but also how it became a reservoir or store- 

 house of forces and materials, so disposed, arranged and 

 adjusted as to make the earth a workshop sufficiently com- 

 plete, had we been here then, to warrant us in looking 

 about us expectant of seeing the workman and mechanic 

 standing near at hand, with sleeves rolled up ready for his 

 job. Everywhere, and in everything, the earth is fairly 

 throbbing with energy, either static, to be let loose as by 

 the touch of a hair-trigger, or dynamic, to be utilized and 

 controlled by the movement of a lever. Gravitation is an 

 engine everywhere and at all times at work in the solid 

 earth, in the Avater, and even in the atmosphere. To this 

 power is added the ])owers of wind, water, heat, cold, and so 

 on to tlie end ; to all of which is added almost inexhaustible 

 and cheaply produced animal ])ower, controllable by man, 

 and itself inlierently directed by an intelligence only in- 



