The ancients used to illustrate the fact that great
need stimulates the inventive powers, by the story of the raven in a drought.
This wise bird we are told. Found water low down in a hollow tree. But as
unable to enter the narrow passage that led to the water. In this predicament
it would have died of thirst. If it had thought of raising the level of the
water by dropping many stones one averse another into the hollow of the tree.
The story is a type of the way in which many useful
inventions were made in the early dawn of civilization. The necessity of defence
against wild beasts taught primitive man to flint-heads for his weapons, to
invent the blow-pipe and bow-.
And-arrow the necessity of obtaining shelter
against the inclemency the weather taught him to build houses and clothe
himself in the skins of wild beasts. As life without fire was almost
impossible, he invented various ways of producing sparks by the rapid friction
of hard pieces of wood. In this way he obtained the means of cooking his food.
But at first the art of boiling was beyond his powers, as he had no vessel
capable of resisting fire. This difficulty was solved in some cases by the
ingenious method of stone boiling. The food to be cooked was placed in skins or
wooden vessels containing water, and the water was heated by dropping into it
stones heated at a neighbouring fire. In this and in many other ways we may
imagine that most of the early inventions of mankind were the result of the
pressure of need. We see the operation of the same cause at work wherever man
has a severe contest with nature. Thus snowshoes and skates and sledges were
invented as means of crossing the snow and ice with which land and sea are
covered for the greater part of the year in the extreme north. In Pakistan and
other countries where there is a long dry season, necessity teaches the
inhabitants to construct tanks capable of containing enough rain-water to last
through the whole year. The natives of Greenland, having no glass, make
themselves windows to the entrails of whales and dolphins; and for want of iron
nails fasten together the planks of their frail fishing-boats with the sinews
of the seal. In countries where coal and wood are scarce. We find bones and
dung used as fuel. Indeed, it would required a large volume merely to enumerate
the various ways in which the inventive power of man all over the world
encounters the necessities imposed upon him l’ the harshness or niggardliness
of nature.
It must not however, be supposed that. As the
proverb we are considering seems to imply, all inventions are due to the
stimulus given by extreme need. This is very far from being the! Case. There
are also many wonderful inventions that have been made by men whose chief
object was the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity. It cannot be said
that any imperious necessity led to the invention of the photographic camera or
of the spectroscope. Even the telegraph and the steam-engine, in spite of their
immense practical utility can hardly be regarded as necessities of existence
seeing that the human race managed to do without them so long never seriously
felt the need of them.
The fact is that in the complicated system of
modern  Civilization the greatest amount of inventive work is done by a
leisure class, the members of which have plenty of time and money to devote to
the work of discovery. The inventions in an early stage of civilization, which
are due to chance and the necessity of living. May be regarded as so many rough
stepping-stones to the greater inventions eventually arrived at by the
methodical investigation of men who, at a later period of history, devoted
their whole lives to scientific study.