Thus, although the sun-dial, clepsydra and sand-glass are still much used, we find ourselves at last in the time and lands of _clocks_. The very sound of the word "clock" gives a clue to its origin. It suggests the striking of the hour upon some bell. The French called the word _cloche_ and the Saxons _clugga_, and both of these originally meant a bell.
If you will put yourself back in the picture at the beginning of the chapter, you will find yourself in a realm of sounding, pealing, chiming bells with the hours of prayer throughout the day, from matins to angelus, rung out from the belfries, and with frequent deep-toned strikings of the hour. Not even a blind man could have remained unconscious of the passage of the hours under such conditions, and time, in a sense, became more a possession of democracy although timepieces themselves were still the mark of special privilege.
Life also was beginning to hurry just a little. Very deliberate, we should call it in comparison with the mad rush of the twentieth century, and yet it began to show its growing complexity in that humanity was becoming more definitely organized and men were forced to depend more and more upon each other. In all of this, there was a slightly growing sense of the things that were to be, just as the water for some miles above Niagara begins to hasten its course under the influence of the mighty cataract over which it will at last go madly plunging.
Herein occurs another of those baffling questions, like the old-time puzzler as to whether the hen first came from the egg or the egg from the hen. One cannot help wondering to what extent the increasing accuracy of the broadening knowledge of time-keeping was the _result_ of our complicated modern life and to what extent it was the _cause_. Certainly we cannot conceive of present-day affairs as being conducted save in the light of moving hands and figures upon a dial.
From the Middle Ages, then, we get our word for clock and, which is more important, we begin to get some crude application of its modern mechanical principles. They were wonderfully skilful, those medieval workmen, considering the means at their disposal, and the ingenuity of some of their clocks is still a delight, but, perhaps, for better understanding of the story, we should stop for a minute to inquire exactly what a clock means from the mechanical point of view.