What is technology? : an inaugural lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh, on November 7, 1855 / by George Wilson.

Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What is technology? : an inaugural lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh, on November 7, 1855 / by George Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    The ants are at one on their Corn-laws. The wasps are content with then- Game-laws. The bees never alter their tax upon sugar; nor dream of lessening the severities of their penal code : their drones are slaughtered as relentlessly as they were three thousand yeai's ago ; nor has a solitary change been permitted since first there were bees, in any of their singular domestic institutions. To those wise creatures the Author of All has given, not only infallible rules for their work, but unfalteruig faith in them. Labour is for them not a doubt, but a certainty. Duty is the same thing as happiness. They never grow weary of life; and death never surprises them. Wonderful combinations of individual volition, pnrsuing its own ends, and of implicit suri'ender to Omnipotent will, subduing all opposition, they are most wonderful in the latter respect, and are less to be likened to n.s, than to perfect self-repair- ing machines, whicli swiftly raise our admiration from themselves, to Him who made and who sustains them. We are industrial for other reasons, and in a different way. Our working instincts are very few; our faith in them still more feeble; / and om' physical wants far greater than those of any other creature. Had the assembled lower animals been invited to pronounce upon what medical men call the Viability, or managers of insurance offices the Chances of Life, of the first hiiman infant, their verdict would have been swift, perhaps compassionate, but certainly inex- orable. The poor little featherless biped, pitied by the downy gosling, and despised by the plumed eaglet, would have been con- signed to the early grave, whicli so plainly in appearance awaited liim ; and no mighty Nimrod, with endless lion-slaying hunter-sons, would have been seen to dawn in long perspective above the horizon, and claim the fragile infant as their stalwart father. Yet the heritage of nakedness, which no animal envies us, is not more the memorial of the innocence that once was ours, than it is the omen of the labours which it compels us to u.ndergo. With the intellects of angels, and the bodies of earth-worms, we have the power to conquer, and the need to do it. Half of the Industrial Arts are the result of our being born without clothes; the other half of our being born without tools. I use this language deliber- ately. The Fine Arts may be gracefully grouped round the five senses. The eye to the painter, the ear to the musician, the tongue to the poet, the hand to the sculptor, and the whole body, the in- strument of touch, among all. The Fine Arts thus begin each with