oil-painting, looking-glasses; the art of restoring, in some measure, old
men to their sight by spectacles; gunpowder, &c., had been discovered. A
new world had been fought for, found, and conquered. Would not one
suppose that these sublime discoveries had been made by the greatest
philosophers, and in ages much more enlightened than the present? But it
was far otherwise; all these great changes happened in the most stupid
and barbarous times. Chance only gave birth to most of those inventions;
and it is very probable that what is called chance contributed very much
to the discovery of America; at least, it has been always thought that
Christopher Columbus undertook his voyage merely on the relation of a
captain of a ship which a storm had driven as far westward as the
Caribbean Islands. Be this as it will, men had sailed round the world,
and could destroy cities by an artificial thunder more dreadful than the
real one; but, then, they were not acquainted with the circulation of the
blood, the weight of the air, the laws of motion, light, the number of
our planets, &c. And a man who maintained a thesis on Aristotle's
"Categories," on the universals _a parte rei_, or such-like nonsense, was
looked upon as a prodigy.

The most astonishing, the most useful inventions, are not those which
reflect the greatest honour on the human mind. It is to a mechanical
instinct, which is found in many men, and not to true philosophy, that
most arts owe their origin.

The discovery of fire, the art of making bread, of melting and preparing
metals, of building houses, and the invention of the shuttle, are
infinitely more beneficial to mankind than printing or the sea-compass:
and yet these arts were invented by uncultivated, savage men.

What a prodigious use the Greeks and Romans made afterwards of mechanics!