In the first place, the disinterested inventor, from whose behaviour our author reasons, is purely a figment of his own clerical brain.

Inventors in actual life, as every one knows who has had occasion to deal with them, are generally distinguished by an insane desire for money, by the wildest over-estimates of the wealth which their inventions will ultimately bring them, or by a greed which will sell them for a trifle, provided this be paid immediately.

In the second place, inventions, even the greatest, so long as they represent the power of invention merely, are utterly deficient in all practical value.

So long as they exist nowhere except in the author's brain, or drawings, or in descriptions, or even in the form of models, they might, so far as the world is concerned, have never existed at all.

In the former cases they are dreams; in the last case they are toys.