DYNAMICAL AND MATEEIAL CONDITIONS. 403 



Thus if we inspect a Cotton Factory in full action, we find 

 it to contain a vast number of machines, many of them but 

 repetitions of one another, but many, too, presenting the most 

 marked diversities in construction, in operation, and in result- 

 ant products. We see, for example, that one is supplied with 

 the raw material, which it cleans and dresses ; that another 

 receives the cotton thus prepared, and " cards " it so as to lay 

 its fibres in such an arrangement as may admit of its being 

 spun ; that another series, taking up the product supplied by 

 the carding machine, twists and draws it out into threads of 

 various degrees of fineness ; and that this thread, carried into 

 a fourth set of machines, is woven into a fabric which may 

 be either plain or variously figured according to the construc- 

 tion of the loom. In every one of these dissimilar operations 

 the force, which is immediately concerned in bringing about the 

 results is one and the same ; and the variety of its products is 

 dependent solely upon the diversity of the material instru- 

 ments through which it operates. Yet these arrangements, 

 however skilfully devised, are utterly valueless without the 

 force which brings them into play. All the elaborate mechan- 

 ism, the triumph of human ingenuity in devising, and of skill 

 in constructing, is as powerless as a corpse without the vis 

 viva which alone can animate it. The giant stroke of the 

 steam-engine, or the majestic revolution of the water-wheel 

 gives the required impulse ; and the vast apparatus which 

 was the moment previously in a state of death-like inactivity, 

 is aroused to all the energy of its wondrous life every part 

 of its complex organization taking upon itself its peculiar 

 mode of activity, and evolving its own special product, in vir- 

 tue of the share it receives of the one general force distrib- 

 uted through the entire aggregate of machinery. 



But if we carry back our investigation a stage further, and 

 inquire into the origin of the force supplied by the steam- 

 engine or the water-wheel, we soon meet with a new and 

 most significant fact. At our first stage, it is true, we find 



