The Hunt and Douglas process for extracting copper from its ores. With an appendix including notes on the treatment of silver and gold ores

This may sometimes only be a convenient way of hiding the true character of their innovations, but it may also very often be a delusion of which they themselves are the victims, for it is frequently very difficult to determine to what extent the apparent promoters of the anti-traditional spirit are really conscious of the part they are playing, for they could not play it at all unless they themselves had a twisted mentality. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how the claim to primitive simplicity can be reconciled with the idea of вЂprogress’, of which they simultaneously claim to be agents; the contradiction is enough by itself to indicate that there is something really abnormal in all this. However that may be, and confining attention to the idea of вЂprimitive simplicity’, there seems to be no reason whatever why things should always begin by being simple and continue to get more complex: on the contrary, considering that the germ of any being must necessarily contain the virtuality of all that the being will be in the future, so that all the possibilities to be developed in the course of its existence must be included in the germ from the start, the conclusion that the origin of all things must really be exceedingly complex is inevitable ...»