In China, precisely similar replies would be made by capitalists, concerning the draining of marshes, the erection of more substantial buildings, and other enterprises requiring a large present expenditure, for a remote future return.There such undertakings would be really unprofitable, not paying the usual profits of stock, and they can only in like manner become profitable, by the accumulative principle acquiring increased strength, and instruments being wrought up generally to orders of slower return.
This, however, is not the view, which most readily presents itself to practical men.To a person engaged in the practice of an art, the particular mode which the circumstances of the country to which he belongs has rendered the most profitable, and best, is considered as absolutely the best, and most profitable, and if he remove to another country, he is apt to conceive not only that his knowledge of the art is superior, which may perhaps be true, but that the precise mode in which he applies that knowledge to practice, is also the best, that can any where be adopted, which is very possibly erroneous.
A English farmer, for example, who comes to North America to pursue his art, almost always commences on the same system which he followed in Britain.His agricultural implements, his harness, his carts, waggons, etc.are all of the most durable and complete, and, therefore, of the most expensive construction, and his fields are tilled as laboriously, and carefully, as were those he cultivated in his native land.Sometime usually elapses, before he discovers that he may do better by being content with more simple, and less highly finished implements, and that it will be for his advantage to cultivate his land less laboriously, though not less systematically.
His neighbors tell him, indeed, from the first, that if he expects the same profits as they have, he must have less dead stock on his hands, and must give more activity to his capital; but he is slow of believing them.
Similar observations alight be made, concerning almost every other class of artists, who emigrate to the new world.They all, at first, give a degree of finish to the materials on which they employ their industry, that is unsuited to the circumstances of the country.
CHAPTER X.OF THE CAUSES OF THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION, AND OF THE EFFECTSARISING FROM IT.
Invention is the most important of the secondary agents, to the influence of which man is subject.To us, it is the great immediate maker of almost all that is the subject of our thoughts, or ministers to our enjoyments, or necessities, nor is there any portion of our existence, which is not indebted to its antecedent forming power.Wherever it really is, it is recognised as one and the same, by this its formative capacity.It is always a maker, and, in a double sense, a maker.From the depths of the infinity lying within and without us, it brings visibly before us forms previously hidden.These are its first works.But neither does it intend to stop, nor does it, in fact, stop here.The forms which its eye thus catches, and its skill "bodies forth" into material shape, pass not away; they remain.
Things of power, true workers, drawing to themselves, and fashioning to their semblance, the changeable and fleeting crowd, that time hurries down its stream, they are, in truth, the only permanent dwellers in the world, and rulers of it.In this the double power of his works, the mathematician is as much a maker as the poet, and the poet as the mathematician, and genius in all its manifestations, may, in so far, be considered as the same power, and as excited to action by similar causes.
Our subject leads us to attend to invention, merely as it concerns itself with the material world.But, as the motives exciting the men in whom it is exhibited to give themselves up to its requirements, must be held among the chief of the causes of its manifestation, and as they, who in this department, have been most extensively inventors, have in general communicated little of the principles that animated and sustained them in their career, science and art being silent of themselves, we may be allowed to give wider compass to our view, and to cite, when our purpose requires it, those who have been real discoverers, in any of the various regions over which the power of this principle extends.
The motives, exciting to this sphere of action, are not very apparent.
