“The first and most essential preliminary for a successful investigation is an interest in the question, and any method which tends to diminish or relax interest is false and futile. Diligence in learning the facts of a science is a distinctly unfavorable symptom in a would-be investigator when unaccompanied by a vital constructive interest. That a student hoards facts does not mean that he will build anything with them. Intellectual misers are common, and are quite as unprofitable as the monetary variety. A scientific specialist may have vast knowledge and life-long experience, and yet may never entertain an original idea or make a new rift in the wall of the unknown which baffled his predecessors. Indeed, such men commonly resent a readjustment of the bounds of knowledge as an interference with their vested capital of erudition.
“Investigation is a sentiment, an instinct, a habit of mind; it is man’s effort at knowing and enjoying the universe. The productive investigator desires knowledge for a purpose; he may not be eager for knowledge in general, nor for new knowledge in particular. He values details for their bearing on the problem he hopes to solve. He can gather and sift them to advantage only in the light of a radiant interest, and his ability to utilize them for correct information depends on the delicacy of his perception and the strength of his mental grasp. The investigator, like the athlete, must first be born; he can not be made to order, but his training determines the degree of excellence to which he can attain. No amount of training can remove organic defects, but bad training may be worse than none in lessening the attainment of the most capable. That education is false and injurious which puts the matter first and retards or prevents the development of constructive mental ability, a power not peculiar to the investigator, but in him reaching the greatest scope and freedom of action.”
Aid from Picturing Power.
A picturing faculty such as comes to the flower in an inventor may often be observed in a skilful workman. In a shoe factory a veteran will lift a hide, utterly irregular in form, and cut soles and heels from it, so that the remaining scraps are a mere trifle, while flaws have been avoided.
Hugh Miller, in “My Schools and Schoolmasters,” thus speaks of a fellow stone-mason:—“John Fraser’s strength had never been above the average of that of Scotchmen, and it was now considerably reduced; nor did his mallet deal more or heavier blows than that of the common workman. He had, however, an extraordinary power of conceiving of the finished piece of work, as lying within the rude stone from which it was his business to disinter it; and while ordinary stone-cutters had to repeat and re-repeat their lines and draughts, and had in this way virtually to give their work several surfaces in detail ere they reached the true one, old John cut upon the true figure at once, and made one surface serve for all. In building, too, he exercised a similar power; he hammer-dressed his stones with fewer strokes than other workmen, and in fitting the interspaces between the stones already laid, always picked from out the heap at his feet the stone that exactly filled the place; while other operatives busied themselves in picking up stones that were too small or too large; or, if they set themselves to reduce the too large ones, reduced them too little or too much, and had to fit and fit again. Whether building or hewing, John never seemed in a hurry. He has been seen, when far advanced in life, working very leisurely, as became his years, on one side of a wall, and two stout young fellows building against him on the other side—toiling, apparently, twice harder than he, but the old man always contriving to keep a little ahead of them both.”
Henry Maudslay, famous as an inventor, had the same exquisite sense of form. When he executed a piece of work he was greatly indebted to the dexterity he had acquired as a blacksmith in early life. He used to say that to be a good smith you must be able to see in an iron bar the object you mean to get out of it with hammer and chisel, just as the sculptor sees the statue he intends to carve from a block of marble.
Eyes and Hands Inform the Brain.
Inventors and artists have in common a keen perception of form, an ability to confer form with skill and accuracy. Often the same man is at once inventor and artist. Of this class Leonardo da Vinci is the most illustrious example. Alexander Nasmyth, of Edinburgh, who invented the bow-string bridge, was an eminent painter of portraits and landscapes. His son, James Nasmyth, who devised the steam hammer and the steam pile-driver, tells us in his autobiography:—
“My father taught me to sketch with exactness every object, whether natural or artificial, so as to enable the hand accurately to reproduce what the eye had seen. In order to acquire this almost invaluable art, he was careful to educate my eye, so that I might perceive the relative proportions of objects placed before me. He would throw down at random a number of bricks, or pieces of wood representing them, and set me to copy their forms, proportions, lights and shadows. I have often heard him say that any one who could make a correct drawing in regard to outline, and also indicate by a few effective touches the variation of lights and shadows of such a group of model objects, might not despair of making a good and correct sketch of York Minster. My father was an enthusiast in praise of this graphic language, and I have followed his example. In fact it formed a principal part of my own education. It gave me the power of recording observations with a few graphic strokes of the pencil, and far surpassing in expression any number of mere words. This graphic eloquence is one of the highest gifts in conveying clear and correct ideas as to the forms of objects—whether they be those of a simple and familiar kind, or of some form of mechanical construction, or of the details of a fine building, or the characteristic features of a wide-stretching landscape. This accomplishment of accurate drawing, which I achieved for the most part in my father’s workroom, served me many a good turn in future years with reference to the engineering work which became the business of my life.”
His mastery of the pencil had undoubtedly a great deal to do in cultivating his powers of inventive imagination. He says:—“It is one of the most delightful results of the possession of the constructive faculty, that one can build up in the mind mechanical structures and set them to work in imagination, and observe beforehand the various details performing their respective functions, as if they were in absolute form and action. Unless this happy faculty exists in the brain of the mechanical engineer, he will have a hard and disappointing life before him. It is the early cultivation of the imagination which gives the right flexibility to the thinking faculty.”