462 



MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREAD WELL. 



nishcd by navigation. In determining the place of a ship on the broad ocean, genius, skill, and 

 experience alone are nothing, and -the observation of the compass and of the heavens would be 

 unavailing, but for the deductions which science makes from them. In most other instances, 

 the end is only wrought through the intervention of some species of machinery ; here the obser- 

 vations being furnished, the sciences of geometry and numbers themselves become instruments 

 by the operation of which the required object is produced. This is to be regarded, however, as 

 almost a solitary or exceptional instance ; and I must declare that, after an examination of many 

 years, I have been unable to perceive that the arts have been advanced so exclusively by the 

 application of science to their machinery or processes as is generally believed. Generally the 

 great improvements in the arts have been made by men who were hardly acquainted with 

 the rudiments of science. Still, however, they were all under the influence of the knowledge 

 of the age, and received aid from their acquaintance with facts which had been disclosed by 

 scientific investigation. This knowledge was highly useful in the perfection of the steam-engine 

 and the chronometer: perhaps it was indispensable to give these machines that high degree of 

 perfection that they now possess. It is true that this knowledge alone could never have invented 

 a steam-engine nor a chronometer. To do this it was necessary that knowledge should be at the 

 disposal of an imagination which could create and combine shapes never before seen, and trace 

 the course of motion through series of bodies never before combined. The peculiar combination 

 of qualities, intellectual and moral, necessary to give effect to scientific knowledge, so far as this 

 is required to produce the great practical results witnessed within the last hundred years, is a 

 combination of clear and active perceptive faculties, high imaginative power, a great faculty of 

 comparison, and a determined will with never-tiring perseverance." * 



This lecture was printed in 1855. President Quincy (then nearly eighty-four 

 years old) thus acknowledges its reception : — 



To Daniel Tread well. 



Quixcy, October 12, 1855 



Sir, — T thank you for your lecture on the improvements in the useful arts, and their de- 

 pen* lence upon physical science. I have read it with the attention the subject and everything 

 from your pen naturally commands. The entire absence in ancient times of inorganic power in 

 giving motion to the instruments by which all the operations of these arts are performed, was 

 never before so strongly presented to my mind. A new train of thought was also presented to 

 it by your vindication of the Gothic age from the popular opinion that it had lost, with Roman 

 learning, the arts which had nourished during that period. Your tribute to the mediaeval period 

 for its aid to modern civilization seemed to me true and well deserved. 



The spirit also with which you have stripped the metaphysicians, moralists, and philosophers, 

 both of ancient and modern times, of the glory which an accident rather than a direct applica- 

 tion of their minds to the subject has invested them, though bold, seems to be justified by history 

 and fact. I never before had brought under my consideration the comparative merits of Galileo 

 and Lord Bacon in the introduction of the inductive system of philosophy ; but the priority of 

 the former you have, I think, unequivocally substantiated. Tbe claims of Lord Bacon I have 

 long thought to be, on this subject, greatly overstated by his admirers, although I never before 



* The title of the Rumford Professor adopted by the College is "Rumford Professor, and Lecturer on the Appli- 

 cation of the Sciences to the Useful Arts." In accordance with the views expressed in this paper, Mr. Treadwell 

 would have preferred " Lecturer on the Seieuce of the Useful Arts." 



