ADDRESS. 21 
exultant is the old Greek poet, Antipater,! when women are relieved of 
the drudgery of turning the grindstones for the daily supply of corn. 
‘Woman! you who have hitherto had to grind corn, let your arms rest 
for the future. It is no longer for you that the birds announce by their 
songs the dawn of the morning. Ceres has ordered the water-nymphs to 
move the heavy millstones and perform your labour.’ Penelope had 
twelve slaves to grind corn for her small household. During the most 
prosperous time of Athens it was estimated that there were twenty slaves 
to each free citizen. Slaves are mere machines, and machines neither 
invent nor discover. The bondmen of the Jews, the helots of Sparta, 
the captive slaves of Rome, the serfs of Europe, and uneducated labourers 
of the present day who are the slaves of ignorance have added nothing 
to human progress. But as natural forces substitute and become cheaper 
than slave labour, liberty follows advancing civilisation. Machines 
require educated superintendence. One shoe factory in Boston by its 
machines does the work of thirty thousand shoemakers in Paris who 
have still to go through the weary drudgery of mechanical labour. The 
steam power of the world, during the last twenty years, has risen from 
113 million to 29 million horse-power, or 152 per cent. 
Let me takea single example of how even a petty manufacture improved 
by the teachings of science affects the comforts and enlarges the resources 
of mankind. When I was a boy, the only way of obtaining a light 
was by the tinder-box, with its quadruple materials, flint and steel, burnt 
rags or tinder, and a sulphur-match. If everything went well, if the box 
could be found and the air was dry, a light could be obtained in two 
minutes ; but very often the time occupied was much longer, and the 
process became a great trial to the serenity of temper. The consequence 
of this was that a fire or a burning lamp was kept alight through the 
day. Old Gerard, in his Herbal, tells us how certain fungi were used to 
carry fire from one part of the country to the other. The tinder-box 
long held its position as a great discovery in the arts. The Pywidicula 
Igniaria of the Romans appears to have been much the same implement 
as, though a little ruder than, the flint and steel which Philip the Good 
put into the collar of the Golden Fleece in 1429 as a representation of 
high knowledge in the progress of the arts. It continued to prevail 
till 1833, when phosphorus-matches were introduced ; though I have been 
amused to find that there are a few venerable ancients in London who 
still stick to the tinder-box, and for whom a few shops keep a small 
supply. Phosphorus was no new discovery, for it had been obtained by 
an Arabian called Bechel in the eighth century. However, it was for- 
gotten, and was rediscovered by Brandt, who made it out of very 
stinking materials in 1669. Other discoveries had, however, to be 
made before it could be used for lucifer-matches. The science of com- 
bustion was only developed on the discovery of oxygen a century later. 
Time had to elapse before chemical analysis showed the kind of bodies 
1 Analecta Veterum Grecorum, Epig. 39, vol, ii. p. 119. 
