Page:Preparation of the Child for Science.djvu/12

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PREFACE

mechanical appliances jbr comfort and pleasure, but by the evolution of a Race gifted with powers of intellectual enjoyment, larger than those of man as he now exists. He made a special study of the faculty which he called Genius and the conditions of its orderly devel- opment. By Genius he evidently meant, chiefly, the power of seeing truth at first hand. The MS. of his work was entrusted to a friend who is said to have lost it. The rough notes foy the book in Wedgwood's handwriting, with a fair copy of one or two of the chapters, were found in 1883. Among the papers was a scrap on which was written, in a shaking hand, the sentence : — ' How exhilarating is the thought that if, by the labour of my whole life, I can add one idea to the stock of those concerning education, my life has been well spent.'

Charles Babbage. By comparing European mathematical processes with certain ideas about the development of human faculty derived from Asiatic sages, he was able to realize the nature of some thought-processes so vividly as to conceive, in imagination, what may almost be called an Automatic Thinker of iron and brass. His calculating machine, if completed, would sometimes have rung a warning bell and put

up a signal: — 'More data wanted;' and oc-