HISTORY

OF

MARINE ARCHITECTURE,

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INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

On the Origin of Marine Architecture.

D egrading as it may appear to what is called the dignity of humannature, we fear it is a truth, too firmly established to be controverted,or even disputed, that many of those arts, the discovery and perfection of whichare thought to have contributed most eminently to the benefit and advantage ofmankind, owe their existence and progress in a much greater degree to thedepravity of the human mind, than to any of those virtuous principles ofenquiry which can alone adorn and exalt it.

Avarice, luxury, and ambition have been the grand promoters of all pursuitsand discoveries not strictly innocent in themselves, or which do not most unequi-vocally rest on the basis of philosophy only. Those which tend in the most distantdegree, by their operations and effects, to pamper the pride, the sensual appetites,or the lust of power in man, certainly deteriorate his character ; and however spe-ciously it may be pretended, that in their first intention they applied only to theenlargement of the understanding, or the ease of such supposed wants as customhas insinuatingly added to those of nature, it cannot surely be denied by personswho advance this excuse, that their introduction, their progression, andtheir general use, have, in regular proportion to their own advancement,augmented the general inquietude of man, lessened that innocence and purityof mind he is supposed to have originally possessed, and, finally, beenthe grand promoter of those horrid scenes of slaughter and desolation which,during so many ages, have disgraced the universe. The reflection whicharises on seeing nation furiously arming againfl nation, as if in Sreadfulemulation which should prove themselves most barbarous, and most cruel,V ol. I. B must