Prospectus of the Royal Institution. 773 



first view of the subject, it appears very extraordinary 

 that any person should neglect or refuse to avail him- 

 self of a proposed invention or contrivance, which is 

 evidently calculated to facilitate his labour and increase 

 his comforts ; but when we reflect on the power of 

 habit, and consider how difficult it is for a person even 

 to perceive the imperfections of instruments to which 

 he has been accustomed from his early youth, our sur- 

 prise will be very much diminished. 



Many other circumstances aie unfavourable to the 

 introduction of improvements. The very proposal of 

 any thing new carries with it something offensive, 

 something that seems to imply superiority ; and even 

 that kind of superiority precisely to which mankind 

 are least disposed to submit. There are few who do 

 not feel ashamed and mortified at being obliged to 

 learn any thing new, after they have for a long time 

 been considered, and been accustomed to consider 

 themselves, as proficients in the business in which they 

 are engaged. Their awkwardness in their new appren- 

 ticeship, more especially when they are obliged to work 

 with tools with which they are not acquainted, tends 

 much to increase their dislike to the teacher and his 

 doctrine. 



To these obstacles to x the introduction of new im- 

 provements, we may add the innumerable mistakes, 

 voluntary and involuntary, committed by workmen 

 who are employed in any business which is new to 

 them, and which perhaps they neither understand nor 

 approve ; and, what is still more to be feared, those 

 alterations which workmen in general, and more es- 

 pecially those who pride themselves on their ingenuity, 

 have an irresistible propensity to make when they are 



