What they
cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or
too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content themselves with
the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of
performing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more
pertinacious study, or more active faculties.
Among the productions of mechanick art, many are of a form so different
from that of their first materials, and many consist of parts so
numerous and so nicely adapted to each other, that it is not possible to
view them without amazement. But when we enter the shops of artificers,
observe the various tools by which every operation is facilitated, and
trace the progress of a manufacture through the different hands, that,
in succession to each other, contribute to its perfection, we soon
discover that every single man has an easy task, and that the extremes,
however remote, of natural rudeness and artificial elegance, are joined
by a regular concatenation of effects, of which every one is introduced
by that which precedes it, and equally introduces that which is to
follow.
The same is the state of intellectual and manual performances. Long
calculations or complex diagrams affright the timorous and unexperienced
from a second view; but if we have skill sufficient to analyze them into
simple principles, it will be discovered that our fear was groundless.
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