Evolution of the Mechanic Arts. 205 



useful things. The courts have therefore declared that not 

 all improvement is invention and entitled to protection as 

 such, but that, to be thus entitled, a thing must be the 

 product of some exercise of the inventive faculties." Jus- 

 tice Matthews of the Supreme Court, dealing with a device 

 held not to be an invention, said in 1885, it " seems to us 

 not to spring from that intuitive faculty of the mind put 

 forth in search for new results or new methods, creating 

 Avhat had not before existed, or bringing to light what lay 

 hidden from vision ; but, on the other hand, to be the sug- 

 gestion of that common experience which arose sponta- 

 neously, and by a necessity of human reasoning, in the 

 minds of those who became acquainted with the circum- 

 stances with which they had to deal." To which Walker 

 adds : " The ideal line which separates things invented from 

 things otherwise produced has never been completely de- 

 fined nor described. There is no affirmative rule by which 

 to determine the presence or absence of invention in every 

 case. But there are several negative rules, each of which 

 applies to a large class of cases." The practice universally 

 is, to judge each case by itself. To be sure, there must be 

 novelty, there must be utility ; but both those terms are 

 loosely interpreted, and give us no certainty of definition. 



Etymologically, to invent is to "come upon" the word 

 being derived from in and venire. So, to discover is to un- 

 cover. But neither of these terms fully describes or em- 

 bodies the idea for which it stands. Invention is more 

 than mere creation it is a dual process : it involves an 

 act of the mind in conceiving the idea, and an act or series 

 of acts, external to the mind, either actually or amounting 

 to an embodiment of the idea. Our word "create" means, 

 literally, " to beget." In the accovmt of creation in the 

 Bible, the Greek word used in the Septuagint, which has 

 largely influenced our English translation, is a form of the 

 word poieo, which means to compose, as a writer or poet 

 composes. It belongs to the order of mind, thought, and 

 their constructions. If we were to import the word directly 

 into our language, we should say : " In the beginning God 

 poietised the heavens and the earth," i. e., composed them 

 out of the divine mind. We thus have a statement in some 

 degree in harmony with the evolution view. This word, 

 "poietised," would express, as it seems to me, the idea of 

 invention, considered as an act, better than any recognized 



