The mathematical investigations referred to bring the whole apparatus of a great science to the examination of the properties of a given mechanism, and have accumulated in this direction rich material, of enduring and increasing value. What is left unexamined is however the other, immensely deeper part of the problem, the question: How did the mechanism, or the elements of which it is composed, originate? What laws govern its building up? Is it indeed formed according to any laws whatever? Or have we simply to accept as data what invention gives us, the analysis of what is thus obtained being the only scientific problem left—as in the case of natural history?
It may be said that the last method has been hitherto followed exclusively, for only traces appear now and then of penetration behind these data. The peculiar condition consequently presents itself throughout the whole region of investigation into the nature of the machine that the most perfect means have been employed to work upon the results of human invention—that is of human thought without anything being known of the processes of thought which have furnished these results. Terms have been made with this inconsistency, which would not readily be submitted to in any other of the exact sciences, by considering Invention either avowedly or tacitly as a kind of revelation, as the consequence of some higher inspiration. It forms the foundation of the kind of special respect with which any man has been regarded of whom it could be said that he had invented this or that machine. To become acquainted with the thing invented we leap over the train of thought in which it originated, and plunge at once, designedly, in medias res.
If, for instance, we consider the well-known parallel motion which Watt invented for his steam-engine, or that of Evans, or that of Reichenbach, according to the method hitherto adopted, we find that after we have classified them we have nothing further to do than to ascertain the laws of motion by which they are governed as mechanisms, to fix upon the constructive forms most suitable for them—and, if it be required to go further, to elucidate their more intimate mutual relationships. How, however, their inventors arrived at them we leave unentered upon, except in so far as our personal feeling of interest in this point is concerned. Now and then we are glad to overhear the Genius in his
