560 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 
benefits to the individual is, at least, not inconsistent with nature’s method of 
securing progress. However much we may desire to develop a purely altruistic 
spirit in men of all classes we must meantime make the best of human nature as 
it is, and recognise that the rapidity of our progress toward better conditions of 
life will be in proportion to the advantages that each advance can promise to 
those who would be immediately concerned in its realisation. 
It is just a hundred years since passengers were first carried on the Clyde in 
a mechanically propelled ship, and to-day—when they are not too completely 
obscured by smoke—we can see the successors of the ‘Comet’ plying on that 
river with power plants of greatly superior overall etliciency but showing little 
advance in regard to the combustion of the fuel. Had the emission of smoke 
from river craft been prohibited years ago, there is little doubt that engineers 
would have let few days pass without arriving at some solution of the problem 
of inoffensive power production, and the demand for economy would have looked 
after itself. How much better it would be were engineers to take the wider 
view of their duties and responsibilities to which I have reterred, and realise 
that they are acting contrary to the true spirit of their profession when they 
produce appliances that pollute the atmosphere for miles around to the hurt and 
inconvenience of those whose ‘use’ they are intended to serve. But this year a 
ship has left the Clyde that we hope may be the forerunner of a new race which 
will attain a higher efficiency than any of the direct descendants of the ‘ Comet,’ 
and that will ply their trade without inconvenience to man or beast, who can 
claim some right to be permitted to enjoy an unpolluted atmosphere and the 
measure of sunshine which Nature—sparingly enough in those regions—intended 
to provide. 
But there are injuries which we may inflict upon the community other than 
those to health and physical comfort. Every one, even the least cultured, has 
some sense of the beautiful and the comely, and is affected by the aspects of his 
environment more than he himself can realise. The engineer, then, whose works 
needlessly offend even the most fastidious taste is acting contrary to the spirit of 
his profession, at its best. There has been far too great a disrégard of esthetic 
considerations in the everyday work of the engincer-—we usually take a too 
exclusively utilitarian view of our calling. We should not be prepared to accept, 
as referring to the arts we practise at their best, the distinction drawn by a 
philosophical writer between ‘the mechanical arts, which can be efficiently 
exercised by mere trained habit, rote, or calculation,’ and ‘the fine arts, which 
have to be exercised by a higher order of powers.’* And I think it can be 
shown that a greater regard for artistic merit in our designs would not neces- 
sarily lead to extravagance, but, in many cases, would conduce to economy and 
efficiency. It is at least true—and much less than the whole truth—that greater 
artistic merit than is commonly found in our works could be attained with no 
sacrifice of structural fitness, or of suitability for the purposes they are designed 
to serve. 
There was a time when engineers made desperate attempts to secure artistic 
effects by the embellishment (?) of their productions with features which they 
believed to be ornamental. Fortunately the standard of taste has risen above 
and beyond this practice in the case of most members of our profession and most 
of our clients. We are all familiar with illustrations of philosophical instru- 
ments, and other mechanical contrivances, of the early times, that vied in 
lavishness of adornment—though not in artistic merit—with those wonderful 
ustronomical appliances that were carried—as trophies of war!—from Pekin to 
Sans Souci. Many of us can remember a time when the practice had not 
altogether disappeared, even in the design of steam engines, lathes, and other 
products of the mechanical engineer’s workshop. I well remember in my appren- 
ticeship days, the building of a beam engine that was a triumph of ingenuity 
in the misapplication of decorative features. In place of the mildly ornamented 
pillars and entablature of Watt’s design, there was provided, for the support of 
the journals of the beam, a pair of A frames constructed in the form of 
elaborately moulded Gothic arches flanked by lesser arches on each side, while 
the beam itself and many other parts were plentifully provided with even less 
* Ency. Brit., eleventh edition, article ‘ Art.’ 
