190 Ji, Helmkoltz 07i the Interaction of Natu7'al Fo7xes. 



tliis boy and its constructoTj being suspected of the black art, 

 lay for a time in tLe Spanish Inquisition, and with difficulty ob- 

 tauied their freedom, we may infer that in those days even such 

 a toy appeared great enough to excite doubts as to its natural 

 origin. And though these artists may not have hoped to breathe 

 into the creature ef their ingenuity a soul gifted with moral 

 completeness, still there were many who would be willing to 

 dispense with the moral qualities of their servants, if at the same 



time their immoral qualities could also be got rid of; ,and accept, 



instead of the mutability of flesh and bones, services which 

 .should combine the regularity of a machine with the durability 

 of brass and steel. The object, therefore, which the inventive 

 genius of the past century placed before it with the fullest ear- 

 nestness, and not as a piece of amusement merely, was boldly 

 chosen, and was followed up with an expenditure of sagacity 

 which has contributed not a little to enrich the mechanical expe- 

 rience which a later time knew how to take advantage of. We 

 no longer seek to build machines which shall fulfil the thousand 

 services required of one man, but desire, on the contrary, that a 

 machine shall perform one service, yet shall occupy in doing it 

 the place of a thousand men. 



From these efforts to imitate living creatures, another idea, 

 also by a misunderstanding, seems to have developed itself, which, 

 as it were, formed the new philosopher's stone of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries. It was now the endeavor to construct 

 a perpetual motion. Under this term was understood a machine, 

 which, without being wound up, without consuming in the 

 working of it falling water, wind, or any other natural force, 

 should still continue in motion, the motive power being perpet- 

 ually supplied by the machine itself Beasts and human beings 

 seemed to correspond to the idea of such an apparatus, for they 

 moved themselves energetically and incessantly as long as they 

 lived, and were never wound up ; nobody set them in motion. 

 A connexion between the taking-in of nourishment and the de- 

 velopment of force did not make itself apparent. The nourish- 

 ment seemed only necessary to grease, as it were, the wheelwork 

 of the animal machine; to replace what was used up, and to re- 

 new the old* The development of force out of itself seemed to 

 be the essential peculiarity, the real quintessence of organic life. 

 If, therefore, men were to be . constructed, a perpetual motion 

 must first be found. 



-Another hope also seemed to take up incidentally the second 

 place, which in our wiser age would certainly have claimed the 

 first rank in the thoughts of men. The perpetual motion was 

 to produce work inexhaustibly without corresponding consump- 

 tion, that is to say, out of nothing. Work, however, is money. 

 Here, therefore, the great practical problem which the cunning 



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