What is technology? : an inaugural lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh, on November 7, 1855 / by George Wilson.
- Date:
- 1855
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: What is technology? : an inaugural lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh, on November 7, 1855 / by George Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
14/32 (page 10)
![a special sense, and converge towards the body ; the Industrial Arts begin with the body, and diverge towards the special senses. One of the men of genius of our age, Tiiomas Carlyle, has written a prose poem, Sartor Resartus (literally, the Tailor Re-tailored), in which, in his own peculiar eloquent way, he shows how wonderfully the developments of humanity stand related to our native nakedness, and our need of being clothed. Without pretending to follow or rival him, let me soberly urge, that just because naked we came from our mother's womb, and naked we shall retui'n to the Great Mother of us all, we are industrial as no other beings are or can be. I do not propose to offer you a catalogue of the arts which our unclothedness compels us to foster. The shivering savage in the colder countries, robs the seal and the bear, the buifalo and the deer, of the one mantle which nature has given them. The wild huntsman, by a swift, but simple transmutation, becomes the clothier, the tailor, the tannei, the currier, the leather-dresser, the glover, the saddler, the shoemaker, the tent-maker. And the tent-maker, the arch-architect of one of the great schools of architecture, becomes quickly a house-builder, building with snow where better material is not to be had; and a ship-builder, constructing out of a few wooden ribs and stretched animal skins, canoes which, as sad ex- perience has too recently shown us, may survive where English ships of oak have gone to destruction, we know not where. Again : the unchilled savage of the warmer regions seeks a covering, not from the cold, but from the sun, which smites him by day, and the moon, which smites him b}'- night. The palm, the banana, the soft-barked trees, the broad-leaved sedges and long fibred grasses, are spoiled by him, as the beasts of the field are by his colder brother. He becomes a sower, a reaper, a spinner, a weaver, a baker, a brewer, a distiller, a dyer, a carpenter; and whilst he is these, he bends the pliant stems of his tropical forests into roof-trees and raftei-s, and cloches them with leaves, and makes for himself a tabernacle of boughs, and so is the arch-architect of a second great school of architecture; and, by and bye, his twisted branches, and interlaced leaves, grow into Grecian columns with Corinthian acanthus ca])itals, and Gothic pillars with petrified plants and stony flowers gracefully curling round them. Once more : in those tempei'ate regions, where large animals and trees do not greatly abound, turfs, or mixd, or clay, or stones, or all together, can be fashioned into that outermost garment which we](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996131_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
