206 Evolution of the Mechanic Arts. 



English word, since it involves a ncAv mental composition 

 and the substantial reduction of that composition to prac- 

 tice. In other words, invention is something more than a 

 creation, if to create is to beget and bring into being ; since 

 the begetting and bringing into being are of the offices of 

 the body, while invention is a function of the mind, assisted 

 by the body only. It is also something vastly different 

 from a mere happening, or "coming upon," the idea involved 

 in the Avord now in use. 



Mr. Seely suggests the word " eurematics." He has dealt 

 with this subject in two papers read before the Anthropo- 

 logical Society of Washington, printed in the American 

 Anthropologist, under the titles " The Development of Time- 

 keeping in Greece and Rome," and " The Genesis of Inven- 

 tion." He says in the former : " My guide in this inquiry 

 will be the principles in eurematics, that inventions always 

 spring from prior inventions or known expedients, and that 

 they come in response to recognized wa7its. . . . The want 

 may originate in some crisis or event having no apparent 

 affinity in character with the want it engendered, or the in- 

 vention that sprang to meet it. And these are not mere 

 accidents : they are the natural course of what I venture 

 to call the fixed laws of eurematics." 



The word eurematics (eurekamatics) as thus defined has 

 already found its Avay into tlie Century Dictionary. It 

 does not, however, quite fit the niche prepared in this essay 

 for the proper descriptive term. Etymologically and deriva- 

 tively it means ''well-nosed," and carries the definition 

 of "finding," or "discovering," as of a dog finding his prey 

 or a buried bone, and neither of begetting or creating, 

 nor of composing by constructive thought or plan, or 

 " poietising." Tlie word poieties, or poiematics, seems best 

 to express the true idea, since the mind must be the start- 

 ing-point of the fixed laws of invention, and the proper 

 word must cover or express the mental composition or con- 

 struction actually required in the development of an inven- 

 tion, whetlier of a new macliine, a new product, or a new 

 art. Further, a recognized ivant is primarily a recognized 

 need growing out of relative weakness ; and such a state 

 of Aveakuess, or relative infancy, is therefore the primary 

 status, or base, of all invention, as it is of all mental 

 progress. 



Historically, it is the outsider wlio does the inventing, 



