superior to the
carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw
for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and
spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail,
the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the
industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his
technical contrivances the scattered perfections of the animal world. He
even succeeds in surpassing them, because, in the form of tools, he uses
substances and combinations of effects that cannot figure as part of an
organism."[127] It is scarcely likely that most of these inventions
arose from a voluntary imitation of animals: but even supposing such an
origin, there would still remain a fine place for personal creative
work. Man has produced by conscious effort what life realizes by methods
that escape us; so that the creative imagination in man is a
_succedaneum_ of the generative powers of nature.

(2) During the pastoral stage man brought animals under subjection and
discipline. An animal is a machine, ready-made, that needs only to be
trained to obedience; but this training has required and stimulated all
sorts of inventions, from the harness with which to equip it, to the
chariots, wagons, and roads with which and on which it moves.

(3) Later, the natural motors--air and water--have furnished new
material for human ingenuity, e.g., in navigation; wind- and
water-mills, used at first to grind grain, then for a multitude of
uses--sawing, milling, lifting hammers; etc.

(4) Lastly, much later, come products of an already mature civilization,
artificial motors, explosives,--powder and all its derivatives and
substitutes--steam, which has made such great progress.

If the reader please to represent to himself well the immense number of
facts that we have just indicated in a few lines; if he please to note
that every invention, great or small, before becoming a fixed and
realized thing, was at first an imagination, a mere contrivance of the
brain, an assembly of new combinations or new relations, he will be
forced to admit that nowhere--not excepting even esthetic
production--has man imagined to such a great extent.

One of the reasons--though not the only one--that supports the contrary
opinion is, that by the very law of their growing complexity, inventions
are grafted one on another. In all the useful arts improvements have
been so slow, and so