1885 Watch Tower - A2Z.org

trust we shall be able to show this reasonably and in harmony withScripture.The inventions and contrivances which are now proving soconvenient and advantageous to mankind, and which the lecturerthought a proof that this is the Brain Age, are really very modern--nearly all within a century; and the most important are those of thelast threescore years; among others the application of steam andelectricity, in telegraphy, steam railroading, and the application ofthese principles to mechanics. If, then, these be evidences ofincreased brain power, the Brain Age must be only beginning, andthe logical deduction would be that another century would witnessevery form of miracle as an every-day occurrence; and at the sameratio of increase where will it eventuate?But let us see: Are all men inventors? How few there are whoseinventions are really useful and practical compared with the numberwho use an invention when put into their hand! Nor do we speakdisparagingly of that very useful and highly-esteemed class ofpublic servants, when we say that the smaller number of them aremen of great brains. Some of the most brainy men in the world, andthe deepest reasoners, are not mechanical inventors. And someinventors are so intellectually sluggish that you wonder how theyever stumbled into the discoveries they made. The great principleswhich many men in many years work out and improve upon timeand again, were generally discovered by the merest accident,unsought.From a human standpoint we can account for modern inventionsthus: The invention of printing, in A.D. 1440, may be consideredthe starting point. With the printing of books came records of thethoughts and discoveries of thinkers, which without this inventionwould never have been known to their successors on life's pathway.With books came a more general education, and finally commonschools. Schools and colleges do not increase mental capacity, butthey do make mental exercise more general. As knowledge becamemore general and books more common, the generation possessingthese had a decided advantage over previous generations, not onlyin that there were now a thousand thinkers to one, but also in thatthis generation has, through books, the experience of yesterday andthe past in addition to their own.Education and the laudable ambition which accompanies it,enterprise and a desire to achieve distinction and wealth, abetted bythe record and descriptions of invention in the daily press, hasstimulated and brightened man's perceptive qualities, and put eachupon the alert to discover, if possible, some simple or usefulmethod or agency for the convenience of society. Hence we suggestthat modern inventions, looked at from a purely human standpoint,teaches not an increase of brain capacity, but a sharpenedPERCEPTION from natural causes.