A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

Fourteen years only have passed since our twentieth century began. In
those fourteen years how many a father's and mother's heart has bled
for the death of gallant sons, greatly-promising, greatly-daring, who
have sought to rule the skies? With wings not well enough tried, they
have soared dauntlessly aloft, only to add more names to the tragic list
of those whose lives have been sacrificed in order that the groping
hands of science may become sure, so that in time the sons of men may
sail through the heavens as fearlessly as their fathers sailed through the
seas.
High overhead we watch the monoplane, the great, swooping thing,
like a monster black-winged bird, and our minds travel back to the
story of Icarus, who died so many years ago that there are those who
say that his story is but a foolish fable, an idle myth.
Dædalus, grandson of a king of Athens, was the greatest artificer of his
day. Not only as an architect was he great, but as a sculptor he had the
creative power, not only to make men and women and animals that
looked alive, but to cause them to move and to be, to all appearances,
endowed with life. To him the artificers who followed him owed the
invention of the axe, the wedge, the wimble, and the carpenter's level,
and his restless mind was ever busy with new inventions. To his
nephew, Talus, or Perdrix, he taught all that he himself knew of all the
mechanical arts. Soon it seemed that the nephew, though he might not
excel his uncle, equalled Dædalus in his inventive power. As he walked
by the seashore, the lad picked up the spine of a fish, and, having
pondered its possibilities, he took it home, imitated it in iron, and so
invented the saw. A still greater invention followed this. While those
who had always thought that there could be none greater than Dædalus
were still acclaiming the lad, there came to him the idea of putting two
pieces of iron together, connecting them at one end with a rivet, and
sharpening both ends, and a pair of compasses was made. Louder still
were the acclamations of the people. Surely greater than Dædalus was
here. Too much was this for the artist's jealous spirit.
One day they stood together on the top of the Acropolis, and Dædalus,
murder that comes from jealousy in his heart, threw his nephew down.