t him.
Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the
steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless he
can use tools, can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts
into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if it were soft
paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unvarying
steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools: without tools he is
nothing; with tools he is all." His very first contrivances to support
life were tools of the simplest and rudest construction; and his latest
achievements in the substitution of machinery for the relief of the
human hand and intellect are founded on the use of tools of a still
higher order. Hence it is not without good reason that man has by some
philosophers been defined as A TOOL-MAKING ANIMAL.

Tools, like everything else, had small beginnings. With the primitive
stone-hammer and chisel very little could be done. The felling of a
tree would occupy a workman a month, unless helped by the destructive
action of fire. Dwellings could not be built, the soil could not be
tilled, clothes could not be fashioned and made, and the hewing out of
a boat was so tedious a process that the wood must have been far gone
in decay before it could be launched. It was a great step in advance
to discover the art of working in metals, more especially in steel, one
of the few metals capable of taking a sharp edge and keeping it. From
the date of this discovery, working in wood and stone would be found
comparatively easy; and the results must speedily have been felt not
only in the improvement of man's daily food, but in his domestic and
social condition. Clothing could then be made, the primitive forest
could be cleared and tillage carried on; abundant fuel could be
obtained, dwellings erected, ships built, temples reared; every
improvement in tools marking a new step in the development of the human
intellect, and a further stage in the progress of human civilization.

The earliest tools were of the simplest possible character, consisting
principally of modifications of the wedge; such as the knife, the
shears (formed of two knives working on a joint), the chisel, and the
axe. These, with the primitive hammer, formed the principal
stock-in-trade of the early mechanics, who were handicraftsmen in the
literal sense of the word. But the work which the early craftsmen in
wood, stone, brass, and iron, contrived to exec