The Modern Mechanic: A Scientific Guide and Calculator, Comprising Rules and Tables in the Various Departments of Mechanical Skill and Labor (Classic Reprint)

Such introductory observations are rendered the more necessary, as a correct knowledge of the subjects to which they relate, is the only sure foundation on which there can be raised a solid superstructure of science. It is a general opinion that scientific knowledge is entirely different from all other kinds of knowledge ;or that it requires for its cultivation a constitution of mind only to be met with here and there in the great family of mankind ;and what is said of the poet is also thought of the philosopher th-.it lie is burn, not made. All men are certainly not equally endowed with capacities for the acquisition of scientific knowledge, but there are few men indeed who are totally unprivileged. The man who would relinquish scientific pursuits merely because he had no hope of reaching the eminence of aN ewton, a Watt, or aD avy, is no better than him, who, in despair of ever obtaining a share of wealth equal to that of the rich inheritor of the land, would cease to make any honest exertion to raise himself from a state of the most squalid wretchedness. We would not be understood by this to bring the acquisition of knowledge into invidious comparison with the acquisition of wealth the one is in every case a godlike employment, but the other is often the concomitant of vice.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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