CONSTITUENTS OF THE UNIVERSE. 



ventors, instead of keeping within practical 

 lines, where practical results are possible, will 

 waste their time and means in trying to make 

 something operate that they do not compre- 

 hend. If they can see through a thing clearly, 

 they never try to make perpetual motion with 

 it, for then they know better. But they add 

 to and complicate whatever they are con- 

 triving to make move perpetually, until they 

 no longer comprehend what its mode of opera- 

 tion would be; and then they are convinced 

 that they have succeeded. 



Even when they know that a hundred pounds 

 will not raise another hundred, but only bal- 

 ance it, they will still try to make some (to 

 them) incomprehensible complexity operate as 

 a perpetual motion by means of so-called 

 weights. The vacuum is the favorite source 

 from which these impractical schemers attempt 

 to obtain perpetual motion; simply because it 

 is more difficult to understand than the familiar 

 so-called weights. 



Other things have been and will be tried; 

 but there is not, and never will be a machine 



63 



