26 CARNOT. 
To give an idea of its importance to the generality of 
the world, I should be inclined to say, notwithstanding 
the fantastic appearance of the comparison, that Carnot 
has extended to the material world a proverb whose 
truth was only established, before his time, in the moral 
world; that “much noise * and little work” is a saying 
henceforth quite as applicable to the effective labours of 
machines, as to the enterprises of certain individuals 
whose petulance gives rise to the hope of wonders des- 
tined not to be realized. In addressing men of learning, 
I would beg them to distinguish carefully between the 
invention of the material organs by whose aid forces 
transmit their action from one point to another, and the 
discovery of those primordial truths which are applicable 
indistinctively to all imaginable systems; I will endeay- 
our to show that in this first respect the ancients were 
perhaps not inferior to us. The screw of Archimedes, 
the series of toothed wheels of Ctésibius, the hydrostatic 
fountains of Heron of Alexandria, the steam rotating 
machine of the same engineer, a great number of war- 
like machines, and amongst them the balista, might all be 
brought forward to strengthen my view. In the field of 
theoretical truths, on the contrary, the preponderance of 
the moderns would show itself incontestable.t ‘There 
we should see successively, in all their brilliancy, in Hol- 
* The proverb does not fit at all neatly, unless “noise” be taken 
to mean “irregularity ;”» some good machines are very noisy.— 
Translator. 
+ The question is rather unfairly stated against the ancients; for 
Arago speaks as if Archimedes, &c., had only made their machines, 
and not been masters of the principles, which involved as much pri- 
mordial truth as any other discoveries. A fairer distinction seems to 
be, that the moderns launched out into realms where ¢heory alone 
could point out the way; the ancients were led on by experiment and 
observation. — Translaior. 
