512 Thoughts Suggested by Patent Rights. [October, 



hole, and the wisest astronomers look at it through little 

 tubes, or examine its spots projected on disks; narrow views 

 are for certain occasions the best, but the highest glory of 

 the sunlight or of a man is not best seen by dissection. 

 We cannot forget that when a nation is in danger private 

 interests are counted as nothing : so if any man will prove 

 that the labour of individuals in the direction of invention 

 in the arts must be treated on different principles from other 

 labour because of national necessities, we must yield ; but in 

 yielding say that the hope of the state must be temporary 

 only if it depends for progress on men who are to be robbed 

 of all their wealth of invention as soon as made, and irritated 

 by their belief in the injustice of their treatment. By some 

 strange delusion some men believe that inventors will make 

 quite as much money without patents as with. According 

 to a quotation in a recent number of this Journal, it would 

 seem as if Count Bismarck believed that by excessive sharp- 

 ness it might be managed, but the inventor must be sharp 

 indeed if he is sharper than a thief of inventions. If the 

 profits of an invention are divided over many instead of given 

 to one, each must receive only a small share. This is not 

 a matter to reason, it is certain. The inventor cannot by 

 any amount of sharpness keep before all his opponents for 

 fourteen years. They may begin where he leaves off, and 

 without any trouble at all they are up to him. Man may 

 advance in knowledge, but he cannot advance in time, he 

 must live to-day ; no amount of sharpness will ever lead 

 him a moment nearer to-morrow than it will his dullest 

 neighbour. And why should a man require to be sharp in 

 order to obtain justice or in order to make a living? It will 

 be a sad world when only such persons can live. Must we 

 give up punishing thieves on the plea that if we had been 

 as sharp as they we should have lost nothing. It is 

 acknowledged that an individual cannot as a rule defend 

 himself in a great community, and therefore we have laws 

 and law officers. These are for the protection of men not 

 sharp enough to protect themseves ; the very sharp people 

 would rather be without them. 



Let us not forget the assertion under examination, that 

 inventors would make as much without as with patents. 

 As a rule inventors have not money ; this might have been 

 used as a powerful argument to show that inventions were 

 made for the sake of the money. It is, in fact, a rare thing 

 for a rich man to enter into the society of inventors ; he 

 may continue to invent after he has entered. The idea 

 among them is " Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat." 



