' 



Arts developed by simple experience. ig 



the regulators of all technical industry, but also as 

 a fundamental basis of morality.* 



" It is true that some processes of manufacture have 

 not been consequences of abstract scientific discovery 

 that they originally resulted from alterations made 

 in the rudest appliances, and that they have been 

 directed and improved by the results of simple 

 experience. For ages past we derived the benefit of 

 scientific principles without a knowledge of their 

 existence. We trod in the beaten paths of experi- 

 ence ignorant of the truth that we were acting in 

 unison with fixed and certain laws. Numerous arts 

 and processes were in extensive operation long before 

 the principles involved in them were at all under- 

 stood. The arts of enamelling and of iron smelting 

 were known hundreds of years before we were 

 acquainted with the principles of chemistry. In 

 some rare instances also the recorded results of daily 

 experience in practical matters, tabulated and 

 studied, have ultimately led to the discovery of 

 scientific laws ; but all this is merely the making 

 use of our ordinary experience for the advancement 

 of knowledge, instead of making special experiments 

 for the purpose." 



.Many of our processes and manufactures, those of 

 glass and copper for example, are of such great anti- 

 quity, it is impossible to ascertain with certainty the 

 special circumstances under which they originated; 

 but after we have fully considered the ways in which 



* See Chapter 2, Section B. 



