SIMPLIFICATION

It is human nature to keep on in the same old groove, to try to avoid change, even if that change is for the better. This habit is owing to it being so much easier not to have to think for oneself but merely to do as you see others do.

But following convention is not progress.

Convention is the deadly enemy of progress. Simplification is the twin sister of progress. All improvements are the result of simplification, not of elaboration.

The public when they see some very elaborate invention say “how clever,” but the really clever inventor is the one who can make a simple apparatus do the work that formerly could be done only by a much more complicated apparatus, or even took several apparatuses to accomplish.

The Universe appears to consist of endless variety, but the more it is studied (whatever else remains a mystery), this one fact becomes plainer and plainer.

Everything acts in unison.

The Universe is One Perfect Whole.The Universe can, even with our limited knowledge, be reduced to a few simple elements, governed by a few simple “laws.”

It is, from a solar system, to a sub-microscopical organism, subject to the same “laws” and working as one whole.

Probably, it will be ultimately discovered that there is only one “Law” and one Element in the Universe.

All has to obey this “Law,” there is no such thing as “luck,” “chance,” or destruction. All has always existed through incessant permutation; and will exist, from all eternity, through all eternity.

The ancients, and the modern Mahometans knew this. The ancients called it Fate, the Moslems call it Kismet. If a man tries to make an automatic pistol contrary to the Laws of Nature, it naturally will not operate properly, he loses his temper, says it is just his luck, but he reasons wrongly.

If he studies the laws of mechanics, which are one form of the Law of Nature, and complies with them, his pistol will act properly; if not and he is ignorant of the laws of mechanics, his pistol will not act properly; it is not his “hard luck” but simply that he is trying vainly to work against Nature, and Fate holds him in a steel grip.

If he obeys the Laws of Nature, which are another name for Fate, he can go on like a train following its rails, but he can no more make a pistol constructed on wrong principle function properly than he can stop the sun in its course.

Simplification is the goal to be striven for in pistol shooting as it is in sculpture.

I saw two men, as I was writing the above, mowing a field.

One, an elderly man, was working in the conventional manner, cutting short deep swaths with a half blunt scythe set at the wrong angle to the handle, working in a cramped position.

The other, a young man, was examining his scythe.

He altered the blade at an acuter angle to the handle and gave it a twist sideways so that the cutting edge should lie horizontal when in use.

Then he sharpened the blade as carefully as he would strop a razor.

Putting himself into a firm position so that he could swing from the hips as an athlete about to throw the discus would, he made long clean sweeps with his scythe, taking a short depth, but this with a clean cut, and the cut grass thrown clear to the side, his return being only just clear of the grass, like a good sculler feathering.

At the least sign of bad cutting, he re-sharpened the scythe.

Although I know nothing of mowing, I could see at once that this was an artist and a workman at his job, and one who used his brains and took a pride in doing good work.

I asked if he was not the champion mower of the district. I was answered “not at all—he is only the carpenter.”

This is the sort of man who invents.

He diagnoses faults and thinks out how to correct them. He did not, like the other man who had been mowing all his life, work as his father and grandfather had done, because it was the conventional manner. He thought out for himself and improved by simplification.

It is evident that the cut should come on gradually, not jump into a thick bunch of grass all at once, so he set the blade at an angle which made its entry into the grass deeper progressively, and so on with all the rest.

The inventor who knows his business, when he has made something to accomplish its object, does not rest there. This is only the “blocking out” as we sculptors call it.

Then he begins to simplify.

Anything not absolutely necessary is eliminated; he sees if some member cannot be dispensed with by making another fulfil two or even more functions.

This is how Nature works, many organs have several functions; the function of our tongues is not only speech but to help swallowing, to judge if what we put into our mouths is too hot or too cold to swallow, if it is fit for food, or corrosive, etc.

The automatic pistol is still capable of great improvement.All the recoil is not made use of, some is wasted and diverts the aim by jumping the pistol about.

The noise of the discharge is an evil, it ought to be made to do work, not deafen.

To invent a sound-deadener to put on the pistol is working on wrong lines; it is not simplification but it is complication.

Instead of first making a noise and then inventing something to destroy that noise, why not avoid making that noise?

The idea that ugliness does not matter is also a fallacy.

I was objecting to a pistol a man was shooting (and of which he asked my opinion), on the ground that it was so ugly. “What has ugliness to do with a pistol?” he said. “In my opinion, everything,” I answered.

Nothing correct mechanically is ugly, that is the Law of Nature.

The early, impractical, automatic pistols were extremely ugly; the best at present, the U. S. Army Colt, has graceful lines, and the perfect one will be beautiful.

The essence of architecture is beauty in utility.

Look at a first class hand made gun built by an Artist; it has the graceful lines of a classical piece of sculpture.

An automatic pistol should be as simple as possible, the simpler the less likely to go wrong.

The supposed antagonism between Art and Mechanics, between Science and Religion are imaginary.

If we simplify Art to its essential essence and perfection as the Ancient Greeks did—what do we find?

Sculpture is proportion and the essential planes.

What else is mechanics?

Science reduces all to the ONE UNIVERSAL FIRST CAUSE, and this is also the foundation of all religion.

In pistol shooting, all resolves itself into aligning the pistol and discharging the bullet.

The shortest distance from one point to another is the straight line.

Therefore do not “flourish” or “brandish” the pistol up and down before discharging it.

Merely bring it to alignment and discharge it in so doing.

Time is wasted if the trigger is pressed after alignment. Therefore begin pressing the trigger as the pistol is coming to the level.

This is the whole art of pistol shooting.

The way to advance any art, however humble, is for each to help the other with his experience.

Nothing is so inimical to success as convention.

All progress is made on the lines of pruning off all not absolutely essential, in other words by simplification.