148 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



an end, though such of them as helped towards the immediate procuring of 

 food found a ready application. Upon the discoveries which arose out of 

 observation of simple natural phenomena, and of superficial properties of 

 natural materials, were built up knowledge and experience which led man 

 further and further away from his initial steps, until he was making 

 discoveries about materials which owed their character or composition to 

 his development of methods of treatment ; they were, in a practical sense, 

 his own creation, and until he had created them he could not learn their 

 properties and uses. Man had no need of metals before he had discovered 

 them, and until then they did not exist even in his imagination. 



If we seek to trace the course of events that led to the use of bronze 

 for tools and weapons, we see at once that not only were there many 

 discoveries involved, but that these discoveries must have followed in a 

 certain sequence. Our picturing of the course of evolution from hammered 

 native copper to core-cast bronze must be in part speculative, but in the 

 foreshortening perspective of time, and in the light of our own knowledge, 

 we are more likely to see the chain of events as having fewer links than it 

 actually had, rather than more. This is true even if we avoid the error 

 of supposing that when a harder and more amenable ' copper ' began to 

 make its appearance, there was a rapid development of the idea of a still 

 better bronze, together with definite conceptions of an ideal product. In 

 so far as some samples of the new alloy showed themselves as more service- 

 able than others, there was a directional efiort towards repetition — man's 

 primary ambition — and when it was found that the presence of an 

 ' impurity ' in the copper ore was an ameliorating cause, there was a basis 

 for experimental quantitative smelting, which wa§ of the nature of 

 directional research ; but it was a dim foreshadowing of the corresponding 

 process in our own day, not because the mind of man was differently 

 endowed, but because it was differently equipped and trained. 



The building-up of any discovery-complex, such as agriculture or 

 metal-working, is clearly dependent upon single discoveries, following on 

 each other, and some of them could only emerge at the end of a long 

 sequence. Irrigation was not a starting point, nor was the smelting of 

 copper ore. The cire perdue process of casting bronze may be taken as 

 another instance. If we assert the origin of this process independently 

 in two parts of the world, the rashness of the assertion will be proportional 

 to the extent of initial metallurgical knowledge common to the two regions. 

 If in both regions a complete ignorance of metal was the starting-point, 

 the discovery of the cire perdue process independently is far less credible 

 than if knowledge of bronze, and of methods of casting it, prevailed in 

 the two regions. This is obvious, and is often overlooked. 



That some discoveries are more " difficult ' than others is agreed, but 

 it is perhaps not so clearly realised that the difficulties are of more than 

 one kind. The discovery of the phenomenon of the development of heat 

 by the compression of air led to the production of the fire-piston in South- 

 East Asia, perhaps or probably in independence of the European appliance. 

 The phenomenon was no less natural in its ultimate nature than that of 

 the production of sparks from iron pyrites b)^ percussion, but it was not 

 so easily produced by chance, and it was not so easily reproduced by 

 experiment. It was not only a difficult discovery, but it was also difficult 

 in its ajjpreciation and its application. The independent production of 



