740 Proposals for Forming 



sider the power of habit, and then recollect how diffi- 

 cult it is for a person even to perceive the imperfections 

 of instruments with which he has been accustomed from 

 his early youth, our surprise that improvements do not 

 make a more rapid progress will be greatly lessened. 



But there is a great variety of circumstances that are 

 unfavourable to the introduction of improvements. 

 The very proposal of any thing new commonly carries 

 with it something that is offensive ; something that 

 seems to imply a superiority ; and even that kind of 

 superiority precisely to which mankind are least dis- 

 posed to submit. 



There are few, very few indeed, who do not feel 

 ashamed and mortified at being obliged to learn any 

 thing new after they have for a long time been consid- 

 ered, and been accustomed to consider themselves, as 

 proficients in the business in which they are engaged ; 

 and their awkwardness in their new apprenticeship, 

 and especially when they are obliged to work with tools 

 with which they are not acquainted, tends much to 

 increase their dislike to their teacher and to his doc- 

 trines. 



To these obstacles to the introduction of new improve- 

 ments, we may add the innumerable mistakes, voluntary 

 and involuntary, that are committed by workmen who 

 are employed in any business that is new to them, and 

 that perhaps they neither understand nor like ; and (what 

 is still more to be feared) those alterations which work- 

 men in general, and more especially such of them as pride 

 themselves on their ingenuity, have such an irresistible 

 propensity to introduce when they are employed in 

 executing any thing that is new. How many useful 

 inventions have been totally spoiled and brought into 



