EVERY INVENTION IN ITS DUE TIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6811, 15 September 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

EVERY INVENTION IN ITS DUE TIME.

It is a noticeable fast that every great discovery and invention comes in its own proper time; it cuuld not, upon the whole, have been ad va-ntaguously made at any earlier period, and it could not will have been any longer delayed. ' The remark is often made, how much better off ths world would have been if the mariner's compass, and the steam engine, and the lirfc of printing ha l been known in the infancy of its existence. But on consideration fclfis ia not clear. It is W 11known tliat the properties Of the magnet were understood by the Chinese long before its introduction into Europe. There is no. doubt that it has been in use amongst that people for at least fifteen hundred y ears ; and yet China has all the while been pre-eminent among the nations for its complete and absolute isolation, and has done far less than any other, at all corresponding in importance, f®r the civilisation of the world. But when the time arrived that it became necessary for men to travel intelligently over the ocean ; when regions, densely peopled, must be relieved of their surplus populations; when civilisation must carry its treasures to barbaric lands, and that prOcesi of fusion be commenced, which is to result in the organic unity of the race, then came tho discovery. The Crusader brought intelligence to his European home how the Arabian found his way over the trackless desert, by means of a needle, impregnated with loadstone, floating on ; a bit of cornstalk in a basin of water; and this little tremulous pisce of iron was destined therefore to change the aspect of tile woqld. The personal skill of handifraft must in the nature of things take precedence of machinery. The first thiug to ho dole is to excite the spirit of individual industry, thrift, and thoiightfulness. Now, if it had been possible that our modern labour-saving inventions could havo beon brought into use in that iufantile *tate of society; if our 3team engines, and power looms, and planing machines, could then have been ESt in I motion, how would the development of j man's individual powers have been affected ? j It is not by standing by to tend a steam- > boiler, or mend a broken thread, that the race find out their faculties ; but by trying at first, each in his own rude way, to build him some sort of a house to live in, and to make some sort of a coat to wear, and to raise something out of the earth to be eaten. And then the primary Btep in every improvement must bes;iu in the family; the first wheel must be made to spin there, the first loom must be erected there, and be wOrk- d by hand, not by water or steam. The hum' rning of the .spindle and the clatter of the shuttle in the cottage cease, when they have done their part in the educating of the hand and the head; then the woven garment is furnished from some other quarter, and man reaches higher means of culture. At first we may well wonder that the world should have existed fo>r more than fifteen thousand years before the art of printing was discovered. At once so simple and so useful, why did it not follow immediately the invention Of written characters ? If jt had had an earlier birth, it might probably have met with a premature death. Even as it was, when Guttenbe'rg, in the fifteenth century, printed and published the famous Mazarine Bible, it was supposed that none but the devil could have done it, and the German did well to escape being sent to keep him. company in his own piace> Knowledge had to be accumu'ated, before it could be disseminated. The tedious process of copying with the pen answered; the purpose of the world, while there were but fovv that could read, and when even kings signed stata-papors with the sign of the cross, beoause they could not write their names. But when the world was ripe for it, then came the great invention that was to quicken and perpetuate all other inventions. "