diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:22:43 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:22:43 -0700 |
| commit | 2e6da8c5dc5d3f0569db3e0d690c28d3c369e245 (patch) | |
| tree | d8b6fef15ca155ed77ed5df73fa2b3be85311d94 /20361-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '20361-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 20361-h/20361-h.htm | 5881 |
1 files changed, 5881 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/20361-h/20361-h.htm b/20361-h/20361-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e44d859 --- /dev/null +++ b/20361-h/20361-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5881 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> + + <title>The Voice of the Machines, by Gerald Stanley Lee.</title> + <style type="text/css" media="screen"> + /*<![CDATA[*/ + <!-- + + /* General document styles */ + body { + font-family: Georgia,serif; + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%; + } + + p { + text-align: justify; + line-height: 1.5; + text-indent: 2em; + margin: 0; + } + + p.continued {text-indent:0em;} + + h1, h2, h3, h4 { + text-align: center; + margin: 3em 0em; + font-weight: normal; + text-indent: 0em; + } + + span.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 1%; + right: 87%; + font-size: 12px; + text-align: left; + color: gray; + background-color: inherit; + padding: 0em; + text-indent: 0em; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant:normal; + /*Comment next line to show the page numbers*/ + visibility: hidden; + } + + span.blank_page {visibility:hidden;} + + /* Styles for front matter */ + #front_matter {border-top:2px gray solid;} + #title_page, #copyright_page, #dedication_page, #contents {margin:9em auto;} + #title_page p, #copyright_page p {text-align:center;text-indent:0em;margin:2em 0em;} + #title_page .title {margin-bottom:0em;} + #title_page .subtitle {font-size:130%;margin-bottom:3em;} + #title_page .stopword {font-size:90%;} + #title_page .author {font-size:160%;} + #pub_info p {margin:0em; font-family:"Lucida Blackletter", sans-serif;} + #pub_info .publisher {font-size:120%;} + #pub_info .pub_location {font-size:90%;} + #copyright_page .rights_statement {font-variant:small-caps;} + #dedication_page .dedicatee {text-align:center;margin:1.5em 0em;text-indent:0em;} + #contents p {text-indent:0em;} + #contents ul {list-style-type: none;} + #contents ol {list-style-type: upper-roman;} + .content_part {text-align:center;font-size:125%;margin-top:2.5em;} + .content_part_title {font-weight:bold;margin:2.5em 0em 1.5em 0em;} + + /* Parts, Chapters and Sections */ + .part {margin:9em auto;} + .part_number {font-size:150%;text-indent:0em;text-align:center;} + .chapter {margin:5em auto;} + .chapter_number {font-size:125%;text-indent:0em;text-align:center;} + .chapter_ending p {text-indent:0em;text-align:center;} + .section_title {padding-top:3em;} + .ode_title {font-style:italic;padding-top:3em;} + .ode_subtitle {text-align:center;text-indent:0em;font-size:90%;width:80%;margin:auto;} + + /* Styles for End Matter */ + #end_matter {border-bottom:2px gray solid;} + #birds_eye_view {margin:9em auto;} + .end_part_number {padding-top:3em;} + .end_part_title {text-indent:0em;text-align:center;padding-bottom:3em;} + .ad {margin-top:1.5em;font-size:90%;} + .ad_title {font-weight:bold;} + .ad_price, .ad_publisher, .reviewer_style_1 {font-style:italic;} + .reviewer_style_2 {font-variant:small-caps;} + .ad_ending {margin-top:2em;} + .ad_ending p {text-indent:0em;text-align:center;font-weight:bold;} + + /* Poetry */ + .poem { + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-bottom: 1em; + text-align: left; + } + + .poem .stanza { margin: 1em 0em; } + + .poem p { + margin: 0; + padding-left: 3em; + text-indent: -3em; + font-size: 95%; + } + + /* Miscellaneous */ + .emphasized {font-variant:small-caps;} + .smaller_caps {font-size:85%;} + .keep_together {white-space: nowrap;} + .epigram {font-style:italic;margin:0em 0em 3em 5%;} + .thought_break {padding-top:2em;} + .large_thought_break {padding-top:5em;} + .ode_thought_break {letter-spacing:2em; text-align:center;text-indent:0em;} + .ode_thought_break_2 {padding-top:2em;} + + a:link { + color: #000066; + background-color: inherit; + text-decoration: none; + } + + a:visited { + color: #000066; + background-color: inherit; + text-decoration: none; + } + + a:hover { + color: #A8480E; + background-color: inherit; + } + --> + /*]]>*/ + </style> + +</head> + +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Voice of the Machines, by + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Voice of the Machines + An Introduction to the Twentieth Century + +Author: Gerald Stanley Lee + +Release Date: January 15, 2007 [EBook #20361] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Lee Spector and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div id="front_matter"> + <div id="title_page"> + <h1 class="title">The Voice of the Machines</h1> + <p class="subtitle">An Introduction to the Twentieth Century</p> + <p class="stopword">BY</p> + <p class="author">Gerald Stanley Lee</p> + <div id="pub_info"> + <p class="publisher">The Mount Tom Press</p> + <p class="pub_location">Northampton, Massachusetts</p> + </div> + </div> + + <div id="copyright_page"> + <p class="rights_statement">Copyright, 1906<br /> + by<br /> + THE MOUNT TOM PRESS</p> + </div> + + <div id="dedication_page"> + <p class="dedicatee">TO JENNETTE LEE</p> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>… “Now and then my fancy caught</p> + <p>A flying glimpse of a good life beyond—</p> + <p>Something of ships and sunlight, streets and singing,</p> + <p>Troy falling, and the ages coming back,</p> + <p>And ages coming forward.”…</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + + <div id="contents"> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiii" name="pageiii"></a>iii</span></p> + <h2>Contents</h2> + <p class="content_part">PART I</p> + <p class="content_part_title">THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES</p> + <ol> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_1">Machines as Seen from a Meadow</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_2">As Seen through a Hatchway</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_3">The Souls of Machines</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_4">Poets</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_5">Gentlemen</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_1_ch_6">Prophets</a></li> + </ol> + <p class="content_part">PART II</p> + <p class="content_part_title">THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES</p> + <ol> + <li><a href="#part_2_ch_1">As Good as Ours</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_2_ch_2">On Being Busy and Still</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_2_ch_3">On Not Showing Off</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_2_ch_4">On Making People Proud of the World</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_2_ch_5">A Modest Universe</a></li> + </ol> + <p class="content_part"><span class="pagenum"><a id="pageiv" name="pageiv"></a>iv</span>PART III</p> + <p class="content_part_title">THE MACHINES AS POETS</p> + <ol> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_1">Plato and the General Electric Works</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_2">Hewing away on the Heavens and the Earth</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_3">The Grudge against the Infinite</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_4">Symbolism in Modern Art</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_5">The Machines as Artists</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_3_ch_6">The Machines as Philosophers</a></li> + </ol> + <p class="content_part">PART IV</p> + <p class="content_part_title">THE IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES</p> + <ol> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_1">The Idea of Incarnation</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_2">The Idea of Size</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_3">The Idea of Liberty</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_4">The Idea of Immortality</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_5">The Idea of God</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_6">The Idea of the Unseen and the Intangible</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_7">The Idea of Great Men</a></li> + <li><a href="#part_4_ch_8">The Idea of Love and Comradeship</a></li> + </ol> + </div> +</div> + +<div id="Part_I" class="part"> + <p class="part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1"></a>1</span>PART ONE</p> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page2" name="page2"></a>2</span></p> + <h2 class="part_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page3" name="page3"></a>3</span>THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES</h2> + <div id="part_1_ch_1" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number">I</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW</h3> + <p>It would be difficult to find anything in + the encyclopedia that would justify the + claim that we are about to make, or anything + in the dictionary. Even a poem—which is + supposed to prove anything with a little of + nothing—could hardly be found to prove it; + but in this beginning hour of the twentieth + century there are not a few of us—for the time + at least allowed to exist upon the earth—who + are obliged to say (with Luther), “Though + every tile on the roundhouse be a devil, we cannot + say otherwise—the locomotive is beautiful.”</p> + + <p>As seen when one is looking at it as it is, and + is not merely using it.</p> + + <p>As seen from a meadow.</p> + + <p>We had never thought to fall so low as this, + or that the time would come when we would + feel moved—all but compelled, in fact—to betray + to a cold and discriminating world our poor, + pitiful, one-adjective state.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page4" name="page4"></a>4</span>We do not know why a locomotive is beautiful. + We are perfectly aware that it ought not + to be. We have all but been ashamed of it for + being beautiful—and of ourselves. We have + attempted all possible words upon it—the most + complimentary and worthy ones we know—words + with the finer resonance in them, and the + air of discrimination the soul loves. We cannot + but say that several of these words from time + to time have seemed almost satisfactory to our + ears. They seem satisfactory also for general + use in talking with people, and for introducing + locomotives in conversation; but the next time + we see a locomotive coming down the track, + there is no help for us. We quail before the + headlight of it. The thunder of its voice is as + the voice of the hurrying people. Our little + row of adjectives is vanished. All adjectives + are vanished. They are as one.</p> + + <p>Unless the word “beautiful” is big enough to + make room for a glorious, imperious, world-possessing, + world-commanding beauty like this, + we are no longer its disciples. It is become a + play word. It lags behind truth. Let it be + shut in with its rim of hills—the word beautiful—its + show of sunsets and its bouquets and + its doilies and its songs of birds. We are seekers + for a new word. It is the first hour of the + twentieth century. If the hill be beautiful, so + is the locomotive that conquers a hill. So is the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page5" name="page5"></a>5</span>telephone, piercing a thousand sunsets north + to south, with the sound of a voice. The night + is not more beautiful, hanging its shadow over + the city, than the electric spark pushing the + night one side, that the city may behold itself; + and the hour is at hand—is even now upon us—when + not the sun itself shall be more beautiful + to men than the telegraph stopping the sun in + the midst of its high heaven, and holding it + there, while the will of a child to another child + ticks round the earth. “Time shall be folded + up as a scroll,” saith the voice of Man, my + Brother. “The spaces between the hills, to + ME,” saith the Voice, “shall be as though they + were not.”</p> + + <p>The voice of man, my brother, is a new voice.</p> + + <p>It is the voice of the machines.</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_1_ch_2" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page6" name="page6"></a>6</span>II</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">AS SEEN THROUGH A HATCHWAY</h3> + <p>In its present importance as a factor in life + and a modifier of its conditions, the machine + is in every sense a new and unprecedented fact. + The machine has no traditions. The only way + to take a traditional stand with regard to life + or the representation of life to-day, is to leave + the machine out. It has always been left out. + Leaving it out has made little difference. Only + a small portion of the people of the world have + had to be left out with it.</p> + + <p>Not to see poetry in the machinery of this + present age, is not to see poetry in the life of the + age. It is not to believe in the age.</p> + + <p>The first fact a man encounters in this modern + world, after his mother’s face, is the machine. + The moment be begins to think outwards, he + thinks toward a machine. The bed he lies in + was sawed and planed by a machine, or cast in a + foundry. The windows he looks out of were + built in mills. His knife and fork were made + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page7" name="page7"></a>7</span>by steam. His food has come through rollers + and wheels. The water he drinks is pumped to + him by engines. The ice in it was frozen by a + factory and the cloth of the clothes he wears + was flashed together by looms.</p> + + <p>The machine does not end here. When he + grows to years of discretion and looks about him + to choose a place for himself in life, he finds that + that place must come to him out of a machine. + By the side of a machine of one sort or another, + whether it be of steel rods and wheels or of + human beings’ souls, he must find his place in + the great whirling system of the order of mortal + lives, and somewhere in the system—that is, + the Machine—be the ratchet, drive-wheel, belt, + or spindle under infinite space, ordained for him + to be from the beginning of the world.</p> + + <p>The moment he begins to think, a human + being finds himself facing a huge, silent, blue-and-gold + something called the universe, the + main fact of which must be to him that it seems + to go without him very well, and that he must + drop into the place that comes, whatever it may + be, and hold on as he loves his soul, or forever + be left behind. He learns before many years + that this great machine shop of a globe, turning + solemnly its days and nights, where he has + wandered for a life, will hardly be inclined to + stop—to wait perchance—to ask him what he + wants to be, or how this life of his shall get + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page8" name="page8"></a>8</span>itself said. He looks into the Face of Circumstance. + (Sometimes it is the Fist of + Circumstance.) The Face of Circumstance is a + silent face. It points to the machine. He + looks into the faces of his fellow-men, hurrying + past him night and day,—miles of streets of + them. They, too, have looked into the Face of + Circumstance. It pointed to the Machine. + They show it in their faces. Some of them + show it in their gait. The Machine closes + around him, with its vast insistent murmur, + million-peopled and full of laughs and cries. + He listens to it as to the roar of all Being.</p> + + <p>He listens to the Machine’s prophet. “All + men,” says Political Economy, “may be roughly + divided as attaching themselves to one or the + other of three great classes of activity—production, + consumption or distribution.”</p> + + <p>The number of persons who are engaged in + production outside of association with machinery, + if they could be gathered together in + one place, would be an exceedingly small and + strange and uncanny band of human beings. + They would be visited by all the world as + curiosities.</p> + + <p>The number of persons who are engaged in + distribution outside of association with machinery + is equally insignificant. Except for a + few peddlers, distribution is hardly anything + else but machinery.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page9" name="page9"></a>9</span>The number of persons who are engaged in + consumption outside of association with machinery + is equally insignificant. So far as consumption + is concerned, any passing freight train, + if it could be stopped and examined on its way + to New York, would be found to be loaded with + commodities, the most important part of which, + from the coal up, have been produced by one + set of machines to be consumed by another set + of machines.</p> + + <p>So omnipresent and masterful and intimate + with all existence have cogs and wheels and + belts become, that not a civilized man could be + found on the globe to-day, who, if all the + machines that have helped him to live this + single year of 1906 could be gathered or piled + around him where he stands, would be able, for + the machines piled high around his life, to see + the sky—to be sure there was a sky. It is then + his privilege, looking up at this horizon of steel + and iron and running belts, to read in a paper + book the literary definition of what this heaven + is, that spreads itself above him, and above + the world, walled in forever with its irrevocable + roar of wheels.</p> + + <p>“No inspiring emotions,” says the literary + definition, “ideas or conceptions can possibly + be connected with machinery—or ever will be.”</p> + + <p>What is to become of a world roofed in with + machines for the rest of its natural life, and of + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page10" name="page10"></a>10</span>the people who will have to live under the roof + of machines, the literary definition does not + say. It is not the way of literary definitions. + For a time at least we feel assured that we, who + are the makers of definitions, are poetically and + personally safe. Can we not live behind the + ramparts of our books? We take comfort with + the medallions of poets and the shelves that sing + around us. We sit by our library fires, the last + nook of poetry. Beside our gates the great + crowding chimneys lift themselves. Beneath + our windows herds of human beings, flocking + through the din, in the dark of the morning and + the dark of the night, go marching to their fate. + We have done what we could. Have we not + defined poetry? Is it nothing to have laid the + boundary line of beauty?… The huge, + hurrying, helpless world in its belts and spindles—the + people who are going to be obliged to live + in it when the present tense has spoiled it a little + more—all this—the great strenuous problem—the + defense of beauty, the saving of its past, the + forging of its future, the welding of it with life-all + these?… Pull down the blinds, + Jeems. Shut out the noises of the street. A + little longer … the low singing to ourselves. + Then darkness. The wheels and the + din above our graves shall be as the passing of + silence.</p> + + <p>Is it true that, in a few years more, if a man + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page11" name="page11"></a>11</span>wants the society of his kind, he will have to + look down through a hatchway? Or that, if he + wants to be happy, he will have to stand on it + and look away? I do not know. I only know + how it is now.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>They stay not in their hold</p> + <p>These stokers,</p> + <p>Stooping to hell</p> + <p>To feed a ship.</p> + <p>Below the ocean floors,</p> + <p>Before their awful doors</p> + <p>Bathed in flame,</p> + <p>I hear their human lives</p> + <p>Drip—drip.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Through the lolling aisles of comrades</p> + <p>In and out of sleep,</p> + <p>Troops of faces</p> + <p>To and fro of happy feet,</p> + <p>They haunt my eyes.</p> + <p>Their murky faces beckon me</p> + <p>From the spaces of the coolness of the sea</p> + <p>Their fitful bodies away against the skies.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + + <div id="part_1_ch_3" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page12" name="page12"></a>12</span>III</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">SOULS OF MACHINES</h3> + <p>It does not make very much difference to the + machines whether there is poetry in them or + not. It is a mere abstract question to the machines.</p> + + <p>It is not an abstract question to the people who + are under the machines. Men who are under + things want to know what the things are for, + and they want to know what they are under + them for. It is a very live, concrete, practical + question whether there is, or can be, poetry in + machinery or not. The fate of society turns + upon it.</p> + + <p>There seems to be nothing that men can care + for, whether in this world or the next, or that + they can do, or have, or hope to have, which is + not bound up, in our modern age, with machinery. + With the fate of machinery it stands + or falls. Modern religion is a machine. If the + characteristic vital power and spirit of the modern + age is organization, and it cannot organize + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page13" name="page13"></a>13</span>in its religion, there is little to be hoped for in + religion. Modern education is a machine. If + the principle of machinery is a wrong and inherently + uninspired principle—if because a + machine is a machine no great meaning can be + expressed by it, and no great result accomplished + by it—there is little to be hoped for in + modern education.</p> + + <p>Modern government is a machine. The more + modern a government is, the more the machine + in it is emphasized. Modern trade is a machine. + It is made up of (1) corporations—huge machines + employing machines, and (2) of trusts—huge + machines that control machines that employ + machines. Modern charity is a machine for + getting people to help each other. Modern + society is a machine for getting them to enjoy + each other. Modern literature is a machine for + supplying ideas. Modern journalism is a machine + for distributing them; and modern art is + a machine for supplying the few, very few, + things that are left that other machines cannot + supply.</p> + + <p>Both in its best and worst features the characteristic, + inevitable thing that looms up in + modern life over us and around us, for better or + worse, is the machine. We may whine poetry + at it, or not. It makes little difference to the + machine. We may not see what it is for. It + has come to stay. It is going to stay until we + do see what it is for. We cannot move it. We + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page14" name="page14"></a>14</span>cannot go around it. We cannot destroy it. + We are born in the machine. A man cannot + move the place he is born in. We breathe the + machine. A man cannot go around what he + breathes, any more than he can go around himself. + He cannot destroy what he breathes, even + by destroying himself. If there cannot be + poetry in machinery—that is if there is no + beautiful and glorious interpretation of machinery + for our modern life—there cannot be + poetry in anything in modern life. Either the + machine is the door of the future, or it stands + and mocks at us where the door ought to be. + If we who have made machines cannot make our + machines mean something, we ourselves are + meaningless, the great blue-and-gold machine + above our lives is meaningless, the winds that + blow down upon us from it are empty winds, + and the lights that lure us in it are pictures of + darkness. There is one question that confronts + and undergirds our whole modern civilization. + All other questions are a part of it. Can a + Machine Age have a soul?</p> + + <p>If we can find a great hope and a great meaning + for the machine-idea in its simplest form, + for machinery itself—that is, the machines of + steel and flame that minister to us—it will be + possible to find a great hope for our other + machines. If we cannot use the machines we + have already mastered to hope with, the less + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page15" name="page15"></a>15</span>we hope from our other machines—our spirit-machines, + the machines we have not mastered—the + better. In taking the stand that there is + poetry in machinery, that inspiring ideas and + emotions can be and will be connected with + machinery, we are taking a stand for the continued + existence of modern religion—(in all + reverence) the God-machine; for modern education—the + man-machine; for modern government—the + crowd-machine; for modern art—the + machine in which the crowd lives.</p> + + <p>If inspiring ideas cannot be connected with a + machine simply because it is a machine, there + is not going to be anything left in this modern + world to connect inspiring ideas with.</p> + + <p>Johnstown haunts me—the very memory of + it. Flame and vapor and shadow—like some + huge, dim face of Labor, it lifts itself dumbly + and looks at me. I suppose, to some it is + but a wraith of rusty vapor, a mist of old + iron, sparks floating from a chimney, while a + train sweeps past. But to me, with its spires + of smoke and its towers of fire, it is as if a great + door had been opened and I had watched a + god, down in the wonder of real things—in the + act of making an earth. I am filled with childhood—and + a kind of strange, happy terror. I + struggle to wonder my way out. Thousands of + railways—after this—bind Johnstown to me; + miles of high, narrow, steel-built streets—the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page16" name="page16"></a>16</span>whole world lifting itself mightily up, rolling + itself along, turning itself over on a great steel + pivot, down in Pennsylvania—for its days and + nights. I am whirled away from it as from a + vision. I am as one who has seen men lifting + their souls up in a great flame and laying down + floors on a star. I have stood and watched, in + the melting-down place, the making and the + welding place of the bones of the world.</p> + + <p>It is the object of this present writing to + search out a world—a world a man can live in. + If he cannot live in this one, let him know it + and make one. If he can, let him face it. If + the word YES cannot be written across the + world once more—written across this year of + the world in the roar of its vast machines—we + want to know it. We cannot quite see the + word YES—sometimes, huddled behind our + machines. But we hear it sometimes. We + know we hear it. It is stammered to us by the + machines themselves.</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_1_ch_4" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page17" name="page17"></a>17</span>IV</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">POETS</h3> + <p>When, standing in the midst of the huge + machine-shop of our modern life, we are + informed by the Professor of Poetics that machinery—the + thing we do our living with—is + inevitably connected with ideas practical and + utilitarian—at best intellectual—that “it will + always be practically impossible to make poetry + out of it, to make it appeal to the imagination,” + we refer the question to the real world, to the + real spirit we know exists in the real world.</p> + + <p>Expectancy is the creed of the twentieth + century.</p> + + <p>Expectancy, which was the property of poets + in the centuries that are now gone by, is the + property to-day of all who are born upon the + earth.</p> + + <p>The man who is not able to draw a distinction + between the works of John Milton and the plays + of Shakespeare, but who expects something of + the age he lives in, comes nearer to being a true + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page18" name="page18"></a>18</span>poet than any writer of verses can ever expect + to be who does not expect anything of this + same age he lives in—not even verses. Expectancy + is the practice of poetry. It is poetry + caught in the act. Though the whole world be + lifting its voice, and saying in the same breath + that poetry is dead, this same world is living in + the presence of more poetry, and more kinds + of poetry, than men have known on the earth + before, even in the daring of their dreams.</p> + + <p>Pessimism has always been either literary—the + result of not being in the real world enough—or + genuine and provincial—the result of not + being in enough of the real world.</p> + + <p>If we look about in this present day for a + suitable and worthy expectancy to make an age + out of, or even a poem out of, where shall we + look for it? In the literary definition? the + historical argument? the minor poet?</p> + + <p>The poet of the new movement shall not be + discovered talking with the doctors, or defining + art in the schools, nor shall he be seen at first + by peerers in books. The passer-by shall see + him, perhaps, through the door of a foundry at + night, a lurid figure there, bent with labor, and + humbled with labor, but with the fire from + the heart of the earth playing upon his face. + His hands—innocent of the ink of poets, of the + mere outsides of things—shall be beautiful with + the grasp of the thing called life—with the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page19" name="page19"></a>19</span>grim, silent, patient creating of life. He shall + be seen living with retorts around him, loomed + over by machines—shadowed by weariness—to + the men about him half comrade, half monk—going + in and out among them silently, with some + secret glory in his heart.</p> + + <p>If literary men—so called—knew the men + who live with machines, who are putting their + lives into them—inventors, engineers and brakemen—as + well as they know Shakespeare and + Milton and the Club, there would be no difficulty + about finding a great meaning—<i>i. e.</i>, a + great hope or great poetry—in machinery. The + real problem that stands in the way of poetry in + machinery is not literary, nor æsthetic. It is + sociological. It is in getting people to notice + that an engineer is a gentleman and a poet.</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_1_ch_5" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20"></a>20</span>V</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">GENTLEMEN</h3> + <p>The truest definition of a gentleman is that + he is a man who loves his work. This + is also the truest definition of a poet. The man + who loves his work is a poet because he expresses + delight in that work. He is a gentleman + because his delight in that work makes him + his own employer. No matter how many men + are over him, or how many men pay him, or + fail to pay him, he stands under the wide heaven + the one man who is master of the earth. He is + the one infallibly overpaid man on it. The man + who loves his work has the single thing the world + affords that can make a man free, that can make + him his own employer, that admits him to the + ranks of gentlemen, that pays him, or is rich + enough to pay him, what a gentleman’s work + is worth.</p> + + <p>The poets of the world are the men who pour + their passions into it, the men who make the + world over with their passions. Everything + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page21" name="page21"></a>21</span>that these men touch, as with some strange + and immortal joy from out of them, has the + thrill of beauty in it, and exultation and wonder. + They cannot have it otherwise even if they + would. A true man is the autobiography of + some great delight mastering his heart for + him, possessing his brain, making his hands + beautiful.</p> + + <p>Looking at the matter in this way, in proportion + to the number employed there are more + gentlemen running locomotives to-day than + there are teaching in colleges. In proportion as + we are more creative in creating machines at + present than we are in creating anything else + there are more poets in the mechanical arts + than there are in the fine arts; and while + many of the men who are engaged in the + machine-shops can hardly be said to be gentlemen + (that is, they would rather be preachers or + lawyers), these can be more than offset by the + much larger proportion of men in the fine arts, + who, if they were gentlemen in the truest sense, + would turn mechanics at once; that is, they + would do the thing they were born to do, and + they would respect that thing, and make every + one else respect it.</p> + + <p>While the definition of a poet and a gentleman—that + he is a man who loves his work—might + appear to make a new division of society, + it is a division that already exists in the actual + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page22" name="page22"></a>22</span>life of the world, and constitutes the only literal + aristocracy the world has ever had.</p> + + <p>It may be set down as a fundamental principle + that, no matter how prosaic a man may be, + or how proud he is of having been born upon this + planet with poetry all left out of him, it is the + very essence of the most hard and practical man + that, as regards the one uppermost thing in his + life, the thing that reveals the power in him, he is + a poet in spite of himself, and whether he knows + it or not.</p> + + <p>So long as the thing a man works with is a + part of an inner ideal to him, so long as he makes + the thing he works with express that ideal, the + heat and the glow and the lustre and the beauty + and the unconquerableness of that man, and of + that man’s delight, shall be upon all that he + does. It shall sing to heaven. It shall sing to + all on earth who overhear heaven.</p> + + <p>Every man who loves his work, who gets his + work and his ideal connected, who makes his + work speak out the heart of him, is a poet. It + makes little difference what he says about it. + In proportion as he has power with a thing; in + proportion as he makes the thing—be it a bit of + color, or a fragment of flying sound, or a word, + or a wheel, or a throttle—in proportion as he + makes the thing fulfill or express what he wants + it to fulfill or express, he is a poet. All heaven + and earth cannot make him otherwise.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page23" name="page23"></a>23</span>That the inventor is in all essential respects + a poet toward the machine that he has made, it + would be hard to deny. That, with all the + apparent prose that piles itself about his + machine, the machine is in all essential respects + a poem to him, who can question? Who has + ever known an inventor, a man with a passion + in his hands, without feeling toward him as he + feels toward a poet? Is it nothing to us to + know that men are living now under the same + sky with us, hundreds of them (their faces haunt + us on the street), who would all but die, who + are all but dying now, this very moment, to + make a machine live,—martyrs of valves and + wheels and of rivets and retorts, sleepless, + tireless, unconquerable men?</p> + + <p>To know an inventor the moment of his + triumph,—the moment when, working his will + before him, the machine at last, resistless, silent, + massive pantomime of a life, offers itself to the + gaze of men’s souls and the needs of their + bodies,—to know an inventor at all is to know + that at a moment like this a chord is touched in + him strange and deep, soft as from out of all + eternity. The melody that Homer knew, and + that Dante knew, is his also, with the grime upon + his hands, standing and watching it there. It is + the same song that from pride to pride and joy + to joy has been singing through the hearts of + The Men Who Make, from the beginning of the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page24" name="page24"></a>24</span>world. The thing that was not, that now is, + after all the praying with his hands … iron + and wood and rivet and cog and wheel—is + it not more than these to him standing before it + there? It is the face of matter—who does + not know it?—answering the face of the man, + whispering to him out of the dust of the earth.</p> + + <p>What is true of the men who make the + machines is equally true of the men who live with + them. The brakeman and the locomotive + engineer and the mechanical engineer and the + sailor all have the same spirit. Their days are + invested with the same dignity and aspiration, + the same unwonted enthusiasm, and self-forgetfulness + in the work itself. They begin their lives + as boys dreaming of the track, or of cogs and + wheels, or of great waters.</p> + + <p>As I stood by the track the other night, + Michael the switchman was holding the road + for the nine o’clock freight, with his faded flag, + and his grim brown pipe, and his wooden leg. + As it rumbled by him, headlight, clatter, and + smoke, and whirl, and halo of the steam, every + brakeman backing to the wind, lying on the air, + at the jolt of the switch, started, as at some + greeting out of the dark, and turned and gave + the sign to Michael. All of the brakemen gave + it. Then we watched them, Michael and I, out + of the roar and the hiss of their splendid cloud, + their flickering, swaying bodies against the sky, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page25" name="page25"></a>25</span>flying out to the Night, until there was nothing + but a dull red murmur and the falling of smoke.</p> + + <p>Michael hobbled back to his mansion by the + rails. He put up the foot that was left from + the wreck, and puffed and puffed. He had + been a brakeman himself.</p> + + <p>Brakemen are prosaic men enough, no doubt, + in the ordinary sense, but they love a railroad + as Shakespeare loved a sonnet. It is not given + to brakemen, as it is to poets, to show to the + world as it passes by that their ideals are + beautiful. They give their lives for them,—hundreds + of lives a year. These lives may be + sordid lives looked at from the outside, but + mystery, danger, surprise, dark cities, and + glistening lights, roar, dust, and water, and + death, and life,—these play their endless spell + upon them. They love the shining of the track. + It is wrought into the very fibre of their being.</p> + + <p>Years pass and years, and still more years. + Who shall persuade the brakemen to leave the + track? They never leave it. I shall always see + them—on their flying footboards beneath the + sky—swaying and rocking—still swaying and + rocking—to Eternity.</p> + + <p>They are men who live down through to the + spirit and the poetry of their calling. It is the + poetry of the calling that keeps them there.</p> + + <p>Most of us in this mortal life are allowed but + our one peephole in the universe, that we may + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page26" name="page26"></a>26</span>see <span class="emphasized smaller_caps">IT</span> withal; but if we love it enough and stand + close to it enough, we breathe the secret and + touch in our lives the secret that throbs through + it all.</p> + + <p>For a man to have an ideal in this world, for + a man to know what an ideal is, even though + nothing but a wooden leg shall come of it, and + a life in a switch-house, and the signal of comrades + whirling by, this also is to have lived.</p> + + <p>The fact that the railroad has the same + fascination for the railroad man that the sea has + for the sailor is not a mere item of interest pertaining + to human nature. It is a fact that pertains + to the art of the present day, and to the + future of its literature. It is as much a symbol + of the art of a machine age as the man Ulysses + is a symbol of the art of an heroic age.</p> + + <p>That it is next to impossible to get a sailor, + with all his hardships, to turn his back upon the + sea is a fact a great many thousand years old. + We find it accounted for not only in the observation + and experience of men, but in their art. It + was rather hard for them to do it at first (as with + many other things), but even the minor poets + have admitted the sea into poetry. The sea + was allowed in poetry before mountains were + allowed in it. It has long been an old story. + When the sailor has grown too stiff to climb the + masts he mends sails on the decks. Everybody + understands—even the commonest people and + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page27" name="page27"></a>27</span>the minor poets understand—why it is that a + sailor, when he is old and bent and obliged to be + a landsman to die, does something that holds + him close to the sea. If he has a garden, he hoes + where he can see the sails. If he must tend + flowers, he plants them in an old yawl, and + when he selects a place for his grave, it is where + surges shall be heard at night singing to his + bones. Every one appreciates a fact like this. + There is not a passenger on the Empire State + Express, this moment, being whirled to the West, + who could not write a sonnet on it,—not a man + of them who could not sit down in his seat, flying + through space behind the set and splendid + hundred-guarding eyes of the engineer, and write + a poem on a dead sailor buried by the sea. A + crowd on the street could write a poem on + a dead sailor (that is, if they were sure he + was dead), and now that sailors enough have + died in the course of time to bring the feeling of + the sea over into poetry, sailors who are still + alive are allowed in it. It remains to be seen + how many wrecks it is going to take, lists of + killed and wounded, fatally injured, columns + of engineers dying at their posts, to penetrate + the spiritual safe where poets are keeping their + souls to-day, untouched of the world, and bring + home to them some sense of the adventure and + quiet splendor and unparalleled expressiveness + of the engineer’s life. He is a man who would + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page28" name="page28"></a>28</span>rather be without a life (so long as he has his + nerve) than to have to live one without an + engine, and when he climbs down from the old + girl at last, to continue to live at all, to him, is + to linger where she is. He watches the track as + a sailor watches the sea. He spends his old age + in the roundhouse. With the engines coming in + and out, one always sees him sitting in the sun + there until he dies, and talking with them. + Nothing can take him away.</p> + + <p>Does any one know an engineer who has not + all but a personal affection for his engine, who + has not an ideal for his engine, who holding her + breath with his will does not put his hand upon + the throttle of that ideal and make that ideal say + something? Woe to the poet who shall seek to + define down or to sing away that ideal. In its + glory, in darkness or in day, we are hid from + death. It is the protection of life. The engineer + who is not expressing his whole soul in + his engine, and in the aisles of souls behind him, + is not worthy to place his hand upon an engine’s + throttle. Indeed, who is he—this man—that + this awful privilege should be allowed to him, + that he should dare to touch the motor nerve + of her, that her mighty forty-mile-an-hour + muscles should be the slaves of the fingers of a + man like this, climbing the hills for him, circling + the globe for him? It is impossible to believe + that an engineer—a man who with a single touch + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page29" name="page29"></a>29</span>sends a thousand tons of steel across the earth as + an empty wind can go, or as a pigeon swings her + wings, or as a cloud sets sail in the west—does + not mean something by it, does not love to do it + because he means something by it. If ever + there was a poet, the engineer is a poet. In his + dumb and mighty, thousand-horizoned brotherhood, + hastener of men from the ends of the + earth that they may be as one, I always see him,—ceaseless—tireless—flying + past sleep—out + through the Night—thundering down the edge + of the world, into the Dawn.</p> + + <p>Who am I that it should be given to me to + make a word on my lips to speak, or to make a + thing that shall be beautiful with my hands—that + I should stand by my brother’s life and gaze + on his trembling track—and not feel what the + engine says as it plunges past, about the man in + the cab? What matters it that he is a wordless + man, that he wears not his heart in a book? + Are not the bell and the whistle and the cloud + of steam, and the rush, and the peering in his + eyes words enough? They are the signals of + this man’s life beckoning to my life. Standing + in his engine there, making every wheel of that + engine thrill to his will, he is the priest of wonder + to me, and of the terror of the splendor of the + beauty of power. The train is the voice of his + life. The sound of its coming is a psalm of + strength. It is as the singing a man would sing + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page30" name="page30"></a>30</span>who felt his hand on the throttle of things. The + engine is a soul to me—soul of the quiet face + thundering past—leading its troop of glories + echoing along the hills, telling it to the flocks + in the fields and the birds in the air, telling it + to the trees and the buds and the little, trembling + growing things, that the might of the spirit + of man has passed that way.</p> + + <p>If an engine is to be looked at from the point + of view of the man who makes it and who knows + it best; if it is to be taken, as it has a right to be + taken, in the nature of things, as being an expression + of the human spirit, as being that + man’s way of expressing the human spirit, there + shall be no escape for the children of this present + world, from the wonder and beauty in it, and the + strong delight in it that shall hem life in, and + bound it round on every side. The idealism and + passion and devotion and poetry in an engineer, + in the feeling he has about his machine, the + power with which that machine expresses that + feeling, is one of the great typical living inspirations + of this modern age, a fragment of the new + apocalypse, vast and inarticulate and far and + faint to us, but striving to reach us still, now + from above, and now from below, and on every + side of life. It is as though the very ground + itself should speak,—speak to our poor, pitiful, + unspiritual, matter-despising souls,—should + command them to come forth, to live, to gaze + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page31" name="page31"></a>31</span>into the heart of matter for the heart of God. It + is so that the very dullest of us, standing among + our machines, can hardly otherwise than guess + the coming of some vast surprise,—the coming + of the day when, in the very rumble of the world, + our sons and daughters shall prophesy, and our + young men shall see visions, and our old men + shall dream dreams. It cannot be uttered. I + do not dare to say it. What it means to our + religion and to our life and to our art, this great + athletic uplift of the world, I do not know. I + only know that so long as the fine arts, in an + age like this, look down on the mechanical arts + there shall be no fine arts. I only know that so + long as the church worships the laborer’s God, + but does not reverence labor, there shall be no + religion in it for men to-day, and none for women + and children to-morrow. I only know that so + long as there is no poet amongst us, who can put + himself into a word, as this man, my brother + the engineer, is putting himself into his engine, + the engine shall remove mountains, and the word + of the poet shall not; it shall be buried beneath + the mountains. I only know that so long as we + have more preachers who can be hired to stop + preaching or to go into life insurance than we + have engineers who can be hired to leave their + engines, inspiration shall be looked for more in + engine cabs than in pulpits,—the vestibule trains + shall say deeper things than sermons say. In + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page32" name="page32"></a>32</span>the rhythm of the anthem of them singing along + the rails, we shall find again the worship we have + lost in church, the worship we fain would find in + the simpered prayers and paid praises of a + thousand choirs,—the worship of the creative + spirit, the beholding of a fragment of creation + morning, the watching of the delight of a man in + the delight of God,—in the first and last delight + of God. I have made a vow in my heart. I + shall not enter a pulpit to speak, unless every + word have the joy of God and of fathers and + mothers in it. And so long as men are more + creative and godlike in engines than they are + in sermons, I listen to engines.</p> + + <p>Would to God it were otherwise. But so it + shall be with all of us. So it cannot but be. + Not until the day shall come when this wistful, + blundering church of ours, loved with exceeding + great and bitter love, with all her proud and + solitary towers, shall turn to the voices of life + sounding beneath her belfries in the street, shall + she be worshipful; not until the love of all life + and the love of all love is her love, not until + all faces are her faces, not until the face of the engineer + peering from his cab, sentry of a thousand + souls, is beautiful to her, as an altar cloth is + beautiful or a stained glass window is beautiful, + shall the church be beautiful. That day is + bound to come. If the church will not do it + with herself, the great rough hand of the world + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page33" name="page33"></a>33</span>shall do it with the church. That day of the + new church shall be known by men because it + will be a day in which all worship shall be + gathered into her worship, in which her holy + house shall be the comradeship of all delights + and of all masteries under the sun, and all the + masteries and all the delights shall be laid at her + feet.</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_1_ch_6" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page34" name="page34"></a>34</span>VI</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">PROPHETS</h3> + <p>The world follows the creative spirit. + Where the spirit is creating, the strong + and the beautiful flock. If the creative spirit + is not in poetry, poetry will call itself something + else. If it is not in the church, religion will call + itself something else. It is the business of a + living religion, not to wish that the age it lives + in were some other age, but to tell what the age + is for, and what every man born in it is for. A + church that can see only what a few of the men + born in an age are for, can help only a few. If + a church does not believe in a particular man + more than he believes in himself, the less it tries + to do for him the better. If a church does not + believe in a man’s work as he believes in it, does + not see some divine meaning and spirit in it + and give him honor and standing and dignity + for the divine meaning in it; if it is a church in + which labor is secretly despised and in which it + is openly patronized, in which a man has more + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page35" name="page35"></a>35</span>honor for working feebly with his brain than for + working passionately and perfectly with his + hands, it is a church that stands outside of life. + It is excommunicated by the will of Heaven + and the nature of things, from the only Communion + that is large enough for a man to belong + to or for a God to bless.</p> + + <p>If there is one sign rather than another of + religious possibility and spiritual worth in the + men who do the world’s work with machines + to-day, it is that these men are never persuaded + to attend a church that despises that work.</p> + + <p>Symposiums on how to reach the masses are + pitiless irony. There is no need for symposiums. + It is an open secret. It cries upon the house-tops. + It calls above the world in the Sabbath + bells. A church that believes less than the + world believes shall lose its leadership in the + world. “Why should I pay pew rent,” says the + man who sings with his hands, “to men who do + not believe in me, to worship, with men who + do not believe in me, a God that does not believe + in me?” If heaven itself (represented as a rich + and idle place,—seats free in the evening) were + opened to the true laboring man on the condition + that he should despise his hands by holding + palms in them, he would find some excuse for + staying away. He feels in no wise different with + regard to his present life. “Unless your God,” + says the man who sings with his hands, to those + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page36" name="page36"></a>36</span>who pity him and do him good,—“unless your + God is a God I can worship in a factory, He is + not a God I care to worship in a church.”</p> + + <p>Behold it is written: The church that does not + delight in these men and in what these men are + for, as much as the street delights in them, shall + give way to the street. The street is more beautiful. + If the street is not let into the church, it + shall sweep over the church and sweep around it, + shall pile the floors of its strength upon it, above + it. From the roofs of labor—radiant and beautiful + labor—shall men look down upon its + towers. Only a church that believes more than + the world believes shall lead the world. It + always leads the world. It cannot help leading + it. The religion that lives in a machine age, + and that cannot see and feel, and make others + see and feel, the meaning of that machine age, + is a religion which is not worthy of us. It is not + worthy of our machines. One of the machines + we have made could make a better religion than + this. Even now, almost everywhere in almost + every town or city where one goes, if one will + stop or look up or listen, one hears the chimneys + teaching the steeples. It would be blind + for more than a few years more to be discouraged + about modern religion. The telephone, + the wireless telegraph, the X-rays, and + all the other great believers are singing up + around it. The very railroads are surrounding + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page37" name="page37"></a>37</span>it and taking care of it. A few years more + and the steeples will stop hesitating and tottering + in the sight of all the people. They will no + longer stand in fear before what the crowds + of chimneys and railways and the miles of + smokestacks sweeping past are saying to the + people.</p> + + <p>They will listen to what the smokestacks are + saying to the people.</p> + + <p>They will say it better.</p> + + <p>In the meantime they are not listening.</p> + + <p>Religion and art at the present moment, + both blindfolded and both with their ears + stopped, are being swept to the same irrevocable + issue. By all poets and prophets the same + danger signal shall be seen spreading before them + both jogging along their old highways. It is the + arm that reaches across the age.</p> + + <div class="chapter_ending"> + <p>RAILROAD CROSSING</p> + <p>LOOK OUT FOR THE ENGINE!</p> + </div> + + </div> + + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page38" name="page38"></a>38</span></p> +</div> + +<div id="Part_II" class="part"> + <p class="part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page39" name="page39"></a>39</span>PART II.</p> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page40" name="page40"></a>40</span></p> + <h2 class="part_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page41" name="page41"></a>41</span>THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES.</h2> + <div id="part_2_ch_1" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number">I</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">AS GOOD AS OURS</h3> + <p>One is always hearing it said that if a thing + is to be called poetic it must have great + ideas in it, and must successfully express them. + The idea that there is poetry in machinery, has + to meet the objection that, while a machine may + have great ideas in it, “it does not look it.” The + average machine not only fails to express the idea + that it stands for, but it generally expresses + something else. The language of the average + machine, when one considers what it is for, what + it is actually doing, is not merely irrelevant or + feeble. It is often absurd. It is a rare machine + which, when one looks for poetry in it, does not + make itself ridiculous.</p> + + <p>The only answer that can be made to this + objection is that a steam-engine (when one + thinks of it) really expresses itself as well as the + rest of us. All language is irrelevant, feeble, and + absurd. We live in an organically inexpressible + world. The language of everything in it is + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page42" name="page42"></a>42</span>absurd. Judged merely by its outer signs, the + universe over our heads—with its cunning little + stars in it—is the height of absurdity, as a self-expression. + The sky laughs at us. We know + it when we look in a telescope. Time and space + are God’s jokes. Looked at strictly in its outer + language, the whole visible world is a joke. To + suppose that God has ever expressed Himself + to us in it, or to suppose that He could express + Himself in it, or that any one can express anything + in it, is not to see the point of the joke.</p> + + <p>We cannot even express ourselves to one another. + The language of everything we use or + touch is absurd. Nearly all of the tools we do + our living with—even the things that human beings + amuse themselves with—are inexpressive + and foolish-looking. Golf and tennis and football + have all been accused in turn, by people + who do not know them from the inside, of being + meaningless. A golf-stick does not convey + anything to the uninitiated, but the bare sight + of a golf-stick lying on a seat is a feeling to the + one to whom it belongs, a play of sense and + spirit to him, a subtle thrill in his arms. The + same is true of a new fiery-red baby, which, considering + the fuss that is made about it, to a + comparative outsider like a small boy, has + always been from the beginning of the world a + ridiculous and inadequate object. A man could + not possibly conceive, even if he gave all his + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page43" name="page43"></a>43</span>time to it, of a more futile, reckless, hapless expression + of or pointer to an immortal soul than + a week-old baby wailing at time and space. + The idea of a baby may be all right, but in its + outer form, at first, at least, a baby is a failure, + and always has been. The same is true of our + other musical instruments. A horn caricatures + music. A flute is a man rubbing a black stick + with his lips. A trombone player is a monster. + We listen solemnly to the violin—the voice of + an archangel with a board tucked under his chin—and + to Girardi’s ’cello—a whole human race + laughing and crying and singing to us between + a boy’s legs. The eye-language of the violin + has to be interpreted, and only people who are + cultivated enough to suppress whole parts of + themselves (rather useful and important parts + elsewhere) can enjoy a great opera—a huge + conspiracy of symbolism, every visible thing in + it standing for something that can not be seen, + beckoning at something that cannot be heard. + Nothing could possibly be more grotesque, + looked at from the outside or by a tourist from + another planet or another religion, than the + celebration of the Lord’s Supper in a Protestant + church. All things have their outer senses, and + these outer senses have to be learned one at a + time by being flashed through with inner ones. + Except to people who have tried it, nothing + could be more grotesque than kissing, as a form + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page44" name="page44"></a>44</span>of human expression. A reception—a roomful + of people shouting at each other three inches + away—is comical enough. So is handshaking. + Looked at from the outside, what could be more + unimpressive than the spectacle of the greatest + dignitary of the United States put in a vise in + his own house for three hours, having his hand + squeezed by long rows of people? And, taken + as a whole, scurrying about in its din, what could + possibly be more grotesque than a great city—a + city looked at from almost any adequate, + respectable place for an immortal soul to look + from—a star, for instance, or a beautiful life?</p> + + <p>Whether he is looked at by ants or by angels, + every outer token that pertains to man is absurd + and unfinished until some inner thing is put with + it. Man himself is futile and comic-looking (to + the other animals), rushing empty about space. + New York is a spectacle for a squirrel to laugh + at, and, from the point of view of a mouse, a man + is a mere, stupid, sitting-down, skull-living, + desk-infesting animal.</p> + + <p>All these things being true of expression—both + the expression of men and of God—the fact that + machines which have poetry in them do not + express it very well does not trouble me much. + I do not forget the look of the first ocean-engine + I ever saw—four or five stories of it; nor do I + forget the look of the ocean-engine’s engineer + as in its mighty heart-beat he stood with his + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page45" name="page45"></a>45</span>strange, happy, helpless “Twelve thousand + horse-power, sir!” upon his lips.</p> + + <p>That first night with my first engineer still + follows me. The time seems always coming + back to me again when he brought me up from + his whirl of wheels in the hold to the deck of + stars, and left me—my new wonder all stumbling + through me—alone with them and with my + thoughts.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>The engines breathe.</p> + <p>No sound but cinders on the sails</p> + <p>And the ghostly heave,</p> + <p>The voice the wind makes in the mast—</p> + <p>And dainty gales</p> + <p>And fluffs of mist and smoking stars</p> + <p>Floating past—</p> + <p>From night-lit funnels.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>In the wild of the heart of God I stand.</p> + <p>Time and Space</p> + <p>Wheel past my face.</p> + <p>Forever. Everywhere.</p> + <p>I alone.</p> + <p>Beyond the Here and There</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page46" name="page46"></a>46</span>Now and Then</p> + <p>Of men,</p> + <p>Winds from the unknown</p> + <p>Round me blow</p> + <p>Blow to the unknown again.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Out in its solitude I hear the prow</p> + <p>Beyond the silence-crowded decks</p> + <p>Laughing and shouting</p> + <p>At Night,</p> + <p>Lashing the heads and necks</p> + <p>Of the lifted seas,</p> + <p>That in their flight</p> + <p>Urge onward</p> + <p>And rise and sweep and leap and sink</p> + <p>To the very brink</p> + <p>Of Heaven.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Timber and steel and smoke</p> + <p>And Sleep</p> + <p>Thousand-souled</p> + <p>A quiver,</p> + <p>A deadened thunder,</p> + <p>A vague and countless creep</p> + <p>Through the hold,</p> + <p>The weird and dusky chariot lunges on</p> + <p>Through Fate.</p> + <p>From the lookout watch of my soul’s eyes</p> + <p>Above the houses of the deep</p> + <p>Their shadowy haunches fall and rise</p> + <p>—O’er the glimmer-gabled roofs</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page47" name="page47"></a>47</span>The flying of their hoofs,</p> + <p>Through the wonder and the dark</p> + <p>Where skies and waters meet</p> + <p>The shimmer of manes and knees</p> + <p>Dust of seas…</p> + <p>The sound of breathing, urge, confusion</p> + <p>And the beat, the starlight beat</p> + <p>Soft and far and stealthy-fleet</p> + <p>Of the dim unnumbered trampling of their feet.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + + <div id="part_2_ch_2" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48"></a>48</span>II</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">ON BEING BUSY AND STILL</h3> + <p>One of the hardest things about being an + inventor is that the machines (excepting + the poorer ones) never show off. The first time + that the phonograph (whose talking had been + rumored of many months) was allowed to talk + in public, it talked to an audience in Metuchen, + New Jersey, and, much to Mr. Edison’s dismay, + everybody laughed. Instead of being impressed + with the real idea of the phonograph—being + impressed because it could talk at all—people + were impressed because it talked through its + nose.</p> + + <p>The more modern a machine is, when a man + stands before it and seeks to know it,—the more + it expects of the man, the more it appeals to his + imagination and his soul,—the less it is willing + to appeal to the outside of him. If he will not + look with his whole being at a twin-screw + steamer, he will not see it. Its poetry is under + water. This is one of the chief characteristics + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page49" name="page49"></a>49</span>of the modern world, that its poetry is under + water. The old sidewheel steamer floundering + around in the big seas, pounding the air and + water both with her huge, showy paddles, is + not so poetic-looking as the sailboat, and the + poetry in the sailboat is not so obvious, so + plainly on top, as in a gondola.</p> + + <p>People who do not admit poetry in machinery + in general admit that there is poetry in a Dutch + windmill, because the poetry is in sight. A + Dutch windmill flourishes. The American windmill, + being improved so much that it does not + flourish, is supposed not to have poetry in it at + all. The same general principle holds good + with every machine that has been invented. + The more the poet—that is, the inventor—works + on it, the less the poetry in it shows. + Progress in a modern machine, if one watches it + in its various stages, always consists in making + a machine stop posing and get down to work. + The earlier locomotive, puffing helplessly along + with a few cars on its crooked rails, was much + more fire-breathing, dragon-like and picturesque + than the present one, and the locomotive that + came next, while very different, was more impressive + than the present one. Every one + remembers it,—the important-looking, bell-headed, + woodpile-eating locomotive of thirty + years ago, with its noisy steam-blowing habits + and its ceaseless water-drinking habits, with its + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page50" name="page50"></a>50</span>grim, spreading cowcatcher and its huge plug-hat—who + does not remember it—fussing up and + down stations, ringing its bell forever and + whistling at everything in sight? It was impossible + to travel on a train at all thirty years + ago without always thinking of the locomotive. + It shoved itself at people. It was always doing + things—now at one end of the train and now at + the other, ringing its bell down the track, blowing + in at the windows, it fumed and spread + enough in hauling three cars from Boston to + Concord to get to Chicago and back. It was + the poetic, old-fashioned way that engines were + made. One takes a train from New York to + San Francisco now, and scarcely knows there is + an engine on it. All he knows is that he is + going, and sometimes the going is so good he + hardly knows that.</p> + + <p>The modern engines, the short-necked, pin-headed, + large-limbed, silent ones, plunging with + smooth and splendid leaps down their aisles of + space—engines without any faces, blind, grim, + conquering, lifting the world—are more poetic + to some of us than the old engines were, for the + very reason that they are not so poetic-looking. + They are less showy, more furtive, suggestive, + modern and perfect.</p> + + <p>In proportion as a machine is modern it hides + its face. It refuses to look as poetic as it is; + and if it makes a sound, it is almost always a + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page51" name="page51"></a>51</span>sound that is too small for it, or one that belongs + to some one else. The trolley-wire, lifting a + whole city home to supper, is a giant with a + falsetto voice. The large-sounding, the poetic-sounding, + is not characteristic of the modern + spirit. In so far as it exists at all in the modern + age, either in its machinery or its poetry, it + exists because it is accidental or left over. There + was a deep bass steamer on the Mississippi once, + with a very small head of steam, which any one + would have admitted had poetry in it—old-fashioned + poetry. Every time it whistled it + stopped.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_2_ch_3" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page52" name="page52"></a>52</span>III</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">ON NOT SHOWING OFF</h3> + <p>It is not true to say that the modern man + does not care for poetry. He does not care + for poetry that bears on—or for eloquent poetry. + He cares for poetry in a new sense. In the old + sense he does not care for eloquence in anything. + The lawyer on the floor of Congress who seeks + to win votes by a show of eloquence is turned + down. Votes are facts, and if the votes are to + be won, facts must be arranged to do it. The + doctor who stands best with the typical modern + patient is not the most agreeable, sociable, + jogging-about man a town contains, like the + doctor of the days gone by. He talks less. He + even prescribes less, and the reason that it is + hard to be a modern minister (already cut down + from two hours and a half to twenty or thirty + minutes) is that one has to practise more than + one can preach.</p> + + <p>To be modern is to be suggestive and symbolic, + to stand for more than one says or looks—the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page53" name="page53"></a>53</span>little girl with her loom clothing twelve hundred + people. People like it. They are used to it. + All life around them is filled with it. The old-fashioned + prayer-meeting is dying out in the + modern church because it is a mere specialty + in modern life. The prayer-meeting recognizes + but one way of praying, and people who have a + gift for praying that way go, but the majority of + people—people who have discovered that there + are a thousand other ways of praying, and who + like them better—stay away.</p> + + <p>When the telegraph machine was first thought + of, the words all showed on the outside. When + it was improved it became inner and subtle. + The messages were read by sound. Everything + we have which improves at all improves in the + same way. The exterior conception of righteousness + of a hundred years ago—namely, that + a man must do right because it is his duty—is + displaced by the modern one, the morally + thorough one—namely, that a man must do + right because he likes it—do it from the inside. + The more improved righteousness is, the less it + shows on the outside. The more modern + righteousness is, the more it looks like selfishness, + the better the modern world likes it, and the more + it counts.</p> + + <p>On the whole, it is against a thing rather than + in its favor, in the twentieth century, that it + looks large. Time was when if it had not been + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page54" name="page54"></a>54</span>known as a matter of fact that Galileo discovered + heaven with a glass three feet long, men would + have said that it would hardly do to discover + heaven with anything less than six hundred + feet long. To the ancients, Galileo’s instrument, + even if it had been practical, would not have + been poetic or fitting. To the moderns, however, + the fact that Galileo’s star-tool was three + feet long, that he carried a new heaven about + with him in his hands, was half the poetry and + wonder of it. Yet it was not so poetic-looking + as the six-hundred-foot telescope invented later, + which never worked.</p> + + <p>Nothing could be more impressive than the + original substantial <span class="keep_together">R——</span> typewriter. One felt, + every time he touched a letter, as if he must + have said a sentence. It was like saying things + with pile-drivers. The machine obtruded itself + at every point. It flourished its means and + ends. It was a gesticulating machine. One + commenced every new line with his foot.</p> + + <p>The same general principle may be seen running + alike through machinery and through life. + The history of man is traced in water-wheels. + The overshot wheel belonged to a period when + everything else—religion, literature, and art—was + overshot. When, as time passed on, common + men began to think, began to think under + a little, the Reformation came in—and the + undershot wheel, as a matter of course. There + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page55" name="page55"></a>55</span>is no denying that the overshot wheel is more + poetic-looking—it does its work with twelve + quarts of water at a time and shows every quart—but + it soon develops into the undershot wheel, + which shows only the drippings of the water, + and the undershot wheel develops into the + turbine wheel, which keeps everything out of + sight—except its work. The water in the six + turbine wheels at Niagara has sixty thousand + horses in it, but it is not nearly as impressive + and poetic-looking as six turbine wheels’ worth + of water would be—wasted and going over the + Falls.</p> + + <p>The main fact about the modern man as + regards poetry is, that he prefers poetry that + has this reserved turbine-wheel trait in it. It + is because most of the poetry the modern man + gets a chance to see to-day is merely going over + the Falls that poetry is not supposed to appeal + to the modern man. He supposes so himself. + He supposes that a dynamo (forty street-cars on + forty streets, flying through the dark) is not + poetic, but its whir holds him, sense and spirit, + spellbound, more than any poetry that is being + written. The things that are hidden—the + things that are spiritual and wondering—are + the ones that appeal to him. The idle, + foolish look of a magnet fascinates him. He + gropes in his own body silently, harmlessly + with the X-ray, and watches with awe the beating + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page56" name="page56"></a>56</span>of his heart. He glories in inner essences, + both in his life and in his art. He is the disciple + of the X-ray, the defier of appearances. Why + should a man who has seen the inside of matter + care about appearances, either in little things or + great? Or why argue about the man, or argue + about the man’s God, or quibble with words? + Perhaps he is matter. Perhaps he is spirit. + If he is spirit, he is matter-loving spirit, and if + he is matter, he is spirit-loving matter. Every + time he touches a spiritual thing, he makes + it (as God makes mountains out of sunlight) + a material thing. Every time he touches a + material thing, in proportion as he touches it + mightily he brings out inner light in it. He + spiritualizes it. He abandons the glistening + brass knocker—pleasing symbol to the outer + sense—for a tiny knob on his porch door and a + far-away tinkle in his kitchen. The brass + knocker does not appeal to the spirit enough + for the modern man, nor to the imagination. He + wants an inner world to draw on to ring a door-bell + with. He loves to wake the unseen. He + will not even ring a door-bell if he can help it. + He likes it better, by touching a button, to have + a door-bell rung for him by a couple of metals + down in his cellar chewing each other. He + likes to reach down twelve flights of stairs with + a thrill on a wire and open his front door. He + may be seen riding in three stories along his + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page57" name="page57"></a>57</span>streets, but he takes his engines all off the tracks + and crowds them into one engine and puts it out + of sight. The more a thing is out of the sight + of his eyes the more his soul sees it and glories + in it. His fireplace is underground. Hidden + water spouts over his head and pours beneath + his feet through his house. Hidden light creeps + through the dark in it. The more might, the + more subtlety. He hauls the whole human + race around the crust of the earth with a + vapor made out of a solid. He stops solids—sixty + miles an hour—with invisible air. He + photographs the tone of his voice on a platinum + plate. His voice reaches across death with the + platinum plate. He is heard of the unborn. + If he speaks in either one of his worlds he takes + two worlds to speak with. He will not be shut + in with one. If he lives in either he wraps the + other about him. He makes men walk on air. + He drills out rocks with a cloud and he breaks + open mountains with gas. The more perfect + he makes his machines the more spiritual they + are, the more their power hides itself. The + more the machines of the man loom in human + life the more they reach down into silence, and + into darkness. Their foundations are infinity. + The infinity which is the man’s infinity is their + infinity. The machines grasp all space for + him. They lean out on ether. They are the + man’s machines. The man has made them and + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page58" name="page58"></a>58</span>the man worships with them. From the first + breath of flame, burning out the secret of the + Dust to the last shadow of the dust—the breathless, + soundless shadow of the dust, which he + calls electricity—the man worships the invisible, + the intangible. Electricity is his prophet. + It sums him up. It sums up his modern world + and the religion and the arts of his modern + world. Out of all the machines that he has + made the electric machine is the most modern + because it is the most spiritual. The empty + and futile look of a trolley wire does not trouble + the modern man. It is his instinctive expression + of himself. All the habits of electricity + are his habits. Electricity has the modern + man’s temperament—the passion of being invisible + and irresistible. The electric machine + fills him with brotherhood and delight. It is + the first of the machines that he can not help + seeing is like himself. It is the symbol of the + man’s highest self. His own soul beckons to + him out of it.</p> + + <p>And the more electricity grows the more like + the man it grows, the more spirit-like it is. The + telegraph wire around the globe is melted into + the wireless telegraph. The words of his spirit + break away from the dust. They envelop + the earth like ether, and Human Speech, at last, + unconquerable, immeasurable, subtle as the light + of stars,—fights its way to God.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page59" name="page59"></a>59</span>The man no longer gropes in the dull helpless + ground or through the froth of heaven for the + spirit. Having drawn to him the X-ray, which + makes spirit out of dust, and the wireless telegraph, + which makes earth out of air, he delves + into the deepest sea as a cloud. He strides + heaven. He has touched the hem of the garment + at last of <span class="emphasized">Electricity</span>—the archangel of matter.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_2_ch_4" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page60" name="page60"></a>60</span>IV</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">ON MAKING PEOPLE PROUD OF THE WORLD</h3> + <p>Religion consists in being proud of the + Creator. Poetry is largely the same feeling—a + kind of personal joy one takes in the way + the world is made and is being made every + morning. The true lover of nature is touched + with a kind of cosmic family pride every time + he looks up from his work—sees the night and + morning, still and splendid, hanging over him. + Probably if there were another universe than + this one, to go and visit in, or if there were an + extra Creator we could go to—some of us—and + boast about the one we have, it would afford + infinite relief among many classes of people—especially + poets.</p> + + <p>The most common sign that poetry, real + poetry, exists in the modern human heart is + the pride that people are taking in the world. + The typical modern man, whatever may be said + or not said of his religion, of his attitude + toward the maker of the world, has regular and + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page61" name="page61"></a>61</span>almost daily habits of being proud of the world.</p> + + <p>In the twentieth century the best way for a + man to worship God is going to be to realize + his own nature, to recognize what he is for, and + be a god, too. We believe to-day that the best + recognition of God consists in recognizing the + fact that he is not a mere God who does divine + things himself, but a God who can make others + do them.</p> + + <p>Looked at from the point of view of a mere + God who does divine things himself, an earthquake, + for instance, may be called a rather + feeble affair, a slight jar to a ball going <span class="keep_together">——</span> miles + an hour—a Creator could do little less, if + He gave a bare thought to it—but when I waked + a few mornings ago and felt myself swinging in + my own house as if it were a hammock, and was + told that some men down in Hazardville, Connecticut, + had managed to shake the planet like + that, with some gunpowder they had made, I + felt a new respect for Messrs. <span class="keep_together">——</span> and Co. + I was proud of man, my brother. Does he + not shake loose the Force of Gravity—make + the very hand of God to tremble? To his + thoughts the very hills, with their hearts of + stone, make soft responses—when he thinks + them.</p> + + <p>The Corliss engine of Machinery Hall in ’76, + under its sky of iron and glass, is remembered by + many people the day they saw it first as one of + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page62" name="page62"></a>62</span>the great experiences of life. Like some vast, + Titanic spirit, soul of a thousand, thousand + wheels, it stood to some of us, in its mighty silence + there, and wrought miracles. To one twelve-year-old + boy, at least, the thought of the hour he + spent with that engine first is a thought he sings + and prays with to this day. His lips trembled + before it. He sought to hide himself in its + presence. Why had no one ever taught him + anything before? As he looks back through his + life there is one experience that stands out by + itself in all those boyhood years—the choking in + his throat—the strange grip upon him—upon + his body and upon his soul—as of some awful + unseen Hand reaching down Space to him, drawing + him up to Its might. He was like a dazed + child being held up before It—held up to an + infinite fact, that he might look at it again and + again.</p> + + <p>The first conception of what the life of man + was like, of what it might be like, came to at + least one immortal soul not from lips that he + loved, or from a face behind a pulpit, or a voice + behind a desk, but from a machine. To this + day that Corliss engine is the engine of dreams, + the appeal to destiny, to the imagination and + to the soul. It rebuilds the universe. It is the + opportunity of beauty throughout life, the + symbol of freedom, the freedom of men, and of + the unity of nations, and of the worship of God. + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63"></a>63</span>In silence—like the soft far running of the sky—it + wrought upon him there; like some heroic + human spirit, its finger on a thousand wheels, + through miles of aisles, and crowds of gazers, + it wrought. The beat and rhythm of it was as + the beat and rhythm of the heart of man mastering + matter, of the clay conquering God.</p> + + <p>Like some wonder-crowded chorus its voices + surrounded me. It was the first hearing of the + psalm of life. The hum and murmur of it was + like the spell of ages upon me; and the vision + that floated in it—nay, the vision that was builded + in it—was the vision of the age to be: the vision + of Man, My Brother, after the singsong and + dance and drone of his sad four thousand years, + lifting himself to the stature of his soul at last, + lifting himself with the sun, and with the rain, + and with the wind, and the heat and the light, + into comradeship with Creation morning, and + into something (in our far-off, wistful fashion) + of the might and gentleness of God.</p> + + <p>There seem to be two ways to worship Him. + One way is to gaze upon the great Machine that + He has made, to watch it running softly above + us all, moonlight and starlight, and winter and + summer, rain and snowflakes, and growing + things. Another way is to worship Him not + only because He has made the vast and still + machine of creation, in the beating of whose + days and nights we live our lives, but because + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page64" name="page64"></a>64</span>He has made a Machine that can make machines—because + out of the dust of the earth He has + made a Machine that shall take more of the dust + of the earth, and of the vapor of heaven, crowd + it into steel and iron and say, “Go ye now, + depths of the earth—heights of heaven—serve + ye me. I, too, am God. Stones and mists, + winds and waters and thunder—the spirit that + is in thee is my spirit. I also—even I also—am + God!”</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_2_ch_5" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page65" name="page65"></a>65</span>V</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">A MODEST UNIVERSE</h3> + <p>I have heard it objected that a machine does + not take hold of a man with its great ideas + while he stands and watches it. It does not + make him feel its great ideas. And therefore + it is denied that it is poetic.</p> + + <p>The impressiveness of the bare spiritual facts + of machinery is not denied. What seems to be + lacking in the machines from the artistic point + of view at present is a mere knack of making + the faces plain and literal-looking. Grasshoppers + would be more appreciated by more people + if they were made with microscopes on,—either + the grasshoppers or the people.</p> + + <p>If the mere machinery of a grasshopper’s hop + could be made plain and large enough, there is + not a man living who would not be impressed + by it. If grasshoppers were made (as they might + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page66" name="page66"></a>66</span>quite as easily have been) 640 feet high, the huge + beams of their legs above their bodies towering + like cranes against the horizon, the sublimity + of a grasshopper’s machinery—the huge levers + of it, his hops across valleys from mountain to + mountain, shadowing fields and villages—would + have been one of the impressive features of + human life. Everybody would be willing to + admit of the mere machinery of a grasshopper, + (if there were several acres of it) that there was + creative sublimity in it. They would admit + that the bare idea of having such a stately piece + of machinery in a world at all, slipping softly + around on it, was an idea with creative sublimity + in it; and yet these same people because the + sublimity, instead of being spread over several + acres, is crowded into an inch and a quarter, + are not impressed by it.</p> + + <p>But it is objected, it is not merely a matter + of spiritual size. There is something more than + plainness lacking in the symbolism of machinery. + “The symbolism of machinery is lacking in + fitness. It is not poetic.” “A thing can only + be said to be poetic in proportion as its form + expresses its nature.” Mechanical inventions + may stand for impressive facts, but such inventions, + no matter how impressive the facts may + be, cannot be called poetic unless their form + expresses those facts. A horse plunging and + champing his bits on the eve of battle, for instance, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page67" name="page67"></a>67</span>is impressive to a man, and a pill-box + full of dynamite, with a spark creeping toward + it, is not.</p> + + <p>That depends partly on the man and partly + on the spark. A man may not be impressed by + a pill-box full of dynamite and a spark creeping + toward it, the first time he sees it, but the second + time he sees it, if he has time, he is impressed + enough. He does not stand and criticise the + lack of expression in pill-boxes, nor wait to + remember the day when he all but lost his life + because</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>A pill-box by the river’s brim</p> + <p>A simple pill-box was to him</p> + <p>And nothing more.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>Wordsworth in these memorable lines has + summed up and brought to an issue the whole + matter of poetry in machinery. Everything has + its language, and the power of feeling what a + thing means, by the way it looks, is a matter of + experience—of learning the language. The language + is there. The fact that the language of + the machine is a new language, and a strangely + subtle one, does not prove that it is not a language, + that its symbolism is not good, and + that there is not poetry in machinery.</p> + + <p>The inventor need not be troubled because in + making his machine it does not seem to express. + It is written that neither you nor I, comrade + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page68" name="page68"></a>68</span>nor God, nor any man, nor any man’s machine, + nor God’s machine, in this world shall express + or be expressed. If it is the meaning of life to + us to be expressed in it, to be all-expressed, we + are indeed sorry, dumb, plaintive creatures dotting + a star awhile, creeping about on it, warmed + by a heater ninety-five million miles away. + The machine of the universe itself, does not express + its Inventor. It does not even express the + men who are under it. The ninety-five millionth + mile waits on us silently, at the doorways + of our souls night and day, and we wait on + <span class="emphasized">It</span>. Is it not <span class="emphasized">There</span>? Is it not <span class="emphasized">Here</span>—this + ninety-five millionth mile? It is ours. It runs + in our veins. Why should Man—a being who + can live forever in a day, who is born of a boundless + birth, who takes for his fireside the immeasurable—express + or expect to be expressed? + What we would like to be—even what we are—who + can say? Our music is an apostrophe to + dumbness. The Pantomime above us rolls softly, + resistlessly on, over the pantomime within us. + We and our machines, both, hewing away on + the infinite, beckon and are still.</p> + + <p>I am not troubled because the machines do + not seem to express themselves. I do not know + that they can express themselves. I know that + when the day is over, and strength is spent, and + my soul looks out upon the great plain—upon + the soft, night-blooming cities, with their huge + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page69" name="page69"></a>69</span>machines striving in sleep, might lifts itself out + upon me. I rest.</p> + + <p>I know that when I stand before a foundry + hammering out the floors of the world, clashing + its awful cymbals against the night, I lift my + soul to it, and in some way—I know not how—while + it sings to me I grow strong and glad.</p> + </div> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page70" name="page70"></a>70</span></p> +</div> + +<div id="Part_III" class="part"> + <p class="part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page71" name="page71"></a>71</span>PART THREE</p> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page72" name="page72"></a>72</span></p> + <h2 class="part_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page73" name="page73"></a>73</span>THE MACHINES AS POETS</h2> + <div id="part_3_ch_1" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number">I</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">PLATO AND THE GENERAL ELECTRIC WORKS</h3> + <p>I have an old friend who lives just around the + corner from one of the main lines of travel + in New England, and whenever I am passing near + by and the railroads let me, I drop in on him + awhile and quarrel about art. It’s a good old-fashioned + comfortable, disorderly conversation + we have generally, the kind people used to have + more than they do now—sketchy and not too + wise—the kind that makes one think of things + one wishes one had said, afterward.</p> + + <p>We always drift a little at first, as if of course + we could talk about other things if we wanted + to, but we both know, and know every time, + that in a few minutes we shall be deep in a discussion + of the Things That Are Beautiful and + the Things That Are Not.</p> + + <p>Brim thinks that I have picked out more things + to be beautiful than I have a right to, or than + any man has, and he is trying to put a stop to it. + He thinks that there are enough beautiful things + in this world that have been beautiful a long + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page74" name="page74"></a>74</span>while, without having people—well, people like + me, for instance, poking blindly around among + all these modern brand-new things hoping that + in spite of appearances there is something one can + do with them that will make them beautiful + enough to go with the rest. I’m afraid Brim + gets a little personal in talking with me at times + and I might as well say that, while disagreeing + in a conversation with Brim does not lead to + calling names it does seem to lead logically to + one’s going away, and trying to find afterwards, + some thing that is the matter with him.</p> + + <p>“The trouble with you, my dear Brim, is,” I + say (on paper, afterwards, as the train speeds + away), “that you have a false-classic or Stucco-Greek + mind. The Greeks, the real Greeks, + would have liked all these things—trolley cars, + cables, locomotives,—seen the beautiful in them, + if they had to do their living with them every + day, the way we do. You would say you were + more Greek than I am, but when one thinks of + it, you are just going around liking the things + the Greeks liked 3000 years ago, and I am around + liking the things a Greek would like now, that + is, as well as I can. I don’t flatter myself I begin + to enjoy the wireless telegraph to-day the way + Plato would if he had the chance, and Alcibiades + in an automobile would get a great deal + more out of it, I suspect, than anyone I have seen + in one, so far; and I suspect that if Socrates could + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page75" name="page75"></a>75</span>take Bliss Carman and, say, William Watson + around with him on a tour of the General Electric + Works in Schenectady they wouldn’t either + of them write sonnets about anything else for + the rest of their natural lives.”</p> + + <p>I can only speak for one and I do not begin + to see the poetry in the machines that a Greek + would see, as yet.</p> + + <p>But I have seen enough.</p> + + <p>I have seen engineers go by, pounding on this + planet, making it small enough, welding the + nations together before my eyes.</p> + + <p>I have seen inventors, still men by lamps at + midnight with a whirl of visions, with a whirl + of thoughts, putting in new drivewheels on the + world.</p> + + <p>I have seen (in Schenectady,) all those men—the + five thousand of them—the grime on their + faces and the great caldrons of melted railroad + swinging above their heads. I have stood and + watched them there with lightning and with + flame hammering out the wills of cities, putting in + the underpinnings of nations, and it seemed to me + me that Bliss Carman and William Watson would + not be ashamed of them … brother-artists + every one … in the glory … in the dark … Vulcan-Tennysons, + blacksmiths to a planet, + with dredges, skyscrapers, steam shovels and + wireless telegraphs, hewing away on the heavens + and the earth.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_3_ch_2" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page76" name="page76"></a>76</span>II</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">HEWING AWAY ON THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH</h3> + <p>The poetry of machinery to-day is a mere + matter of fact—a part of the daily wonder + of life to countless silent people. The next thing + the world wants to know about machinery is + not that there is poetry in it, but that the poetry + which the common people have already found + there, has a right to be there. We have the fact. + It is the theory to put with the fact which concerns + us next and which really troubles us most. + There are very few of us, on the whole, who can + take any solid comfort in a fact—no matter what + it is—until we have a theory to approve of it + with. Its merely being a fact does not seem to + make very much difference.</p> + + <p>1. Machinery has poetry in it because it is + an expression of the soul.</p> + <p>2. It expresses the soul (1) of the individual + man who creates the machine—the inventor, + and (2) the man who lives with the machine + the engineer.</p> + <p>3. It expresses God, if only that He is a God + who can make men who can thus express their + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77"></a>77</span>souls. Machinery is an act of worship in the + least sense if not in the greatest. If a man who + can make machines like this is not clever enough + with all his powers to find a God, and to worship + a God, he can worship himself. It is + because the poetry of machinery is the kind of + poetry that does immeasurable things instead + of immeasurably singing about them that it has + been quite generally taken for granted that it + is not poetry at all. The world has learned + more of the purely poetic idea of freedom from + a few dumb, prosaic machines that have not + been able to say anything beautiful about it + than from the poets of twenty centuries. The + machine frees a hundred thousand men and + smokes. The poet writes a thousand lines on + freedom and has his bust in Westminster Abbey. + The blacks in America were freed by Abraham + Lincoln and the cotton gin. The real argument + for unity—the argument against secession—was + the locomotive. No one can fight the locomotive + very long. It makes the world over into + one world whether it wants to be one world or + not. China is being conquered by steamships. + It cannot be said that the idea of unity is a new + one. Seers and poets have made poetry out + of it for two thousand years. Machinery is + making the poetry mean something. Every + new invention in matter that comes to us is + a spiritual masterpiece. It is crowded with + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page78" name="page78"></a>78</span>ideas. The Bessemer process has more political + philosophy in it than was ever dreamed of in + Shelley’s poetry, and it would not be hard to + show that the invention of the sewing machine + was one of the most literary and artistic as well + as one of the most religious events of the nineteenth + century. The loom is the most beautiful + thought that any one has ever had about Woman, + and the printing press is more wonderful + than anything that has ever been said on it.</p> + + <p>“This is all very true,” interrupts the Logical + Person, “about printing presses and looms and + everything else—one could go on forever—but + it does not prove anything. It may be true + that the loom has made twenty readers for + Robert Browning’s poetry where Browning + would have made but one, but it does not follow + that because the loom has freed women for + beauty that the loom is beautiful, or that it is + a fit theme for poetry.” “Besides”—breaks + in the Minor Poet—“there is a difference between + a thing’s being full of big ideas and its + being beautiful. A foundry is powerful and + interesting, but is it beautiful the way an electric + fountain is beautiful or a sonnet or a doily?”</p> + + <p>This brings to a point the whole question as + to where the definition of beauty—the boundary + line of beauty—shall be placed. A thing’s being + considered beautiful is largely a matter of size. + The question “Is a thing beautiful?” resolves + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page79" name="page79"></a>79</span>itself into “How large has a beautiful thing a + right to be?” A man’s theory of beauty depends, + in a universe like this, upon how much of + the universe he will let into it. If he is afraid of + the universe if he only lets his thoughts and + passions live in a very little of it, he is apt to + assume that if a beautiful thing rises into the + sublime and immeasurable—suggests boundless + ideas—the beauty is blurred out of it. It is + something—there is no denying that it is something—but, + whatever it is or is not, it is not + beauty. Nearly everything in our modern life + is getting too big to be beautiful. Our poets + are dumb because they see more poetry than + their theories have room for. The fundamental + idea of the poetry of machinery is infinity. + Our theories of poetry were made—most of + them—before infinity was discovered.</p> + + <p>Infinity itself is old, and the idea that infinity + exists—a kind of huge, empty rim around human + life—is not a new idea to us, but the idea + that this same infinity has or can have anything + to do with us or with our arts, or our theories of + art, or that we have anything to do with <span class="emphasized smaller_caps">it</span>, + is an essentially modern discovery. The actual + experience of infinity—that is, the experience + of being infinite (comparatively speaking)—as + in the use of machinery, is a still more modern + discovery. There is no better way perhaps, of + saying what modern machinery really is, than + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page80" name="page80"></a>80</span>to say that it is a recent invention for being + infinite.</p> + + <p>The machines of the world are all practically + engaged in manufacturing the same thing. They + are all time-and-space-machines. They knit + time and space. Hundreds of thousands of + things may be put in machines this very day, + for us, before night falls, but only eternity and + infinity shall be turned out. Sometimes it is + called one and sometimes the other. If a man + is going to be infinite or eternal it makes little + difference which. It is merely a matter of form + whether one is everywhere a few years, or anywhere + forever. A sewing machine is as much + a means of communication as a printing press + or a locomotive. The locomotive takes a woman + around the world. The sewing machine + gives her a new world where she is. At every + point where a machine touches the life of a human + being, it serves him with a new measure of + infinity.</p> + + <p>This would seem to be a poetic thing for a + machine to do. Traditional poetry does not + see any poetry in it, because, according to our + traditions poetry has fixed boundary lines, is an + old, established institution in human life, and + infinity is not.</p> + + <p>No one has wanted to be infinite before. + Poetry in the ancient world was largely engaged + in protecting people from the Infinite. They + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page81" name="page81"></a>81</span>were afraid of it. They could not help feeling + that the Infinite was over them. Worship consisted + in propitiating it, poetry in helping people + to forget it. With the exception of Job, the + Hebrews almost invariably employed a poet—when + they could get one—as a kind of transfigured + policeman—to keep the sky off. It was + what was expected of poets.</p> + + <p>The Greeks did the same thing in a different + way. The only difference was, that the Greeks, + instead of employing their poets to keep the + sky off, employed them to make it as much like + the earth as possible—a kind of raised platform + which was less dreadful and more familiar and + homelike and answered the same general purpose. + In other words, the sky became beautiful + to the Greek when he had made it small enough. + Making it small enough was the only way a + Greek knew of making it beautiful.</p> + + <p>Galileo knew another way. It is because + Galileo knew another way—because he knew + that the way to make the sky beautiful, was to + make it large enough—that men are living in a + new world. A new religion beats down through + space to us. A new poetry lifts away the ceilings + of our dreams. The old sky, with its little + tent of stars, its film of flame and darkness + burning over us, has floated to the past. The + twentieth century—the home of the Infinite—arches + over our human lives. The heaven is + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page82" name="page82"></a>82</span>no longer, to the sons of men, a priests’ wilderness, + nor is it a poet’s heaven—a paper, painted + heaven, with little painted paper stars in it, to + hide the wilderness.</p> + + <p>It is a new heaven. Who, that has lived these + latter years, that has seen it crashing and breaking + through the old one, can deny that what is + over us now is a new heaven? The infinite cave + of it, scooped out at last over our little naked, + foolish lives, our running-about philosophies, + our religions, and our governments—it is the + main fact about us. Arts and literatures—ants + under a stone, thousands of years, blind with + light, hither and thither, racing about, hiding + themselves.</p> + + <p>But not long for dreams. More than this. + The new heaven is matched by a new earth. + Men who see a new heaven make a new earth. + In its cloud of steam, in a kind of splendid, + silent stammer of praise and love, the new earth + lifts itself to the new heaven, lifts up days out + of nights to It, digs wells for winds under It, + lights darkness with falling water, makes ice + out of vapor, and heat out of cold, draws down + Space with engines, makes years out of moments + with machines. It is a new world and all the + men that are born upon it are new widemoving, + cloud and mountain-moving men. The + habits of stars and waters, the huge habits of + space and time, are the habits of the men.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page83" name="page83"></a>83</span>The Infinite, at last, which in days gone by + hung over us—the mere hiding place of Death, + the awful living-room of God—is the neighborhood + of human life.</p> + + <p>Machinery has poetry in it because in expressing + the soul it expresses the greatest idea + that the soul of man can have, namely, the idea + that the soul of man is infinite, or capable of + being infinite.</p> + + <p>Machinery has poetry in it also not merely + because it is the symbol of infinite power in + human life, or because it makes man think he + is infinite, but because it is making him as infinite + as he thinks he is. The infinity of man is + no longer a thing that the poet takes—that he + makes an idea out of—Machinery makes it a + matter of fact.</p> + + </div> + <div id="part_3_ch_3" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page84" name="page84"></a>84</span>III</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE GRUDGE AGAINST THE INFINITE</h3> + <p>The main thing the nineteenth century has + done in literature has been the gradual sorting + out of poets into two classes—those who like + the infinite, who have a fellow-feeling for it, and + those who have not. It seems reasonable to + say that the poets who have habits of infinity, + of space-conquering (like our vast machines), + who seek the suggestive and immeasurable in + the things they see about them—poets who like + infinity, will be the poets to whom we will have + to look to reveal to us the characteristic and + real poetry of this modern world. The other + poets, it is to be feared, are not even liking the + modern world, to say nothing of singing in it. + They do not feel at home in it. The classic-walled + poet seems to feel exposed in our world. + It is too savagely large, too various and unspeakable + and unfinished. He looks at the sky + of it—the vast, unkempt, unbounded sky of it, + to which it sings and lifts itself—with a strange, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page85" name="page85"></a>85</span>cold, hidden dread down in his heart. To him + it is a mere vast, dizzy, dreary, troubled formlessness. + Its literature—its art with its infinite + life in it, is a blur of vagueness. He complains + because mobs of images are allowed in it. + It is full of huddled associations. When Carlyle + appeared, the Stucco-Greek mind grudgingly + admitted that he was ‘effective.’ A man who + could use words as other men used things, who + could put a pen down on paper in such a way as + to lift men out from the boundaries of their lives + and make them live in other lives and in other + ages, who could lend them his own soul, had to + have something said about him; something very + good and so it was said, but he was not an + “artist.” From the same point of view and to + the same people Browning was a mere great + man (that is: a merely infinite man). He was a + man who went about living and loving things, + with a few blind words opening the eyes of the + blind. It had to be admitted that Robert + Browning could make men who had never looked + at their brothers’ faces dwell for days in their + souls, but he was not a poet. Richard Wagner, + too, seer, lover, singer, standing in the turmoil of + his violins conquering a new heaven for us, had + great conceptions and was a musical genius + without the slightest doubt, but he was not an + “artist.” He never worked his conceptions out. + His scores are gorged with mere suggestiveness. + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page86" name="page86"></a>86</span>They are nothing if they are not played again + and again. For twenty or thirty years Richard + Wagner was outlawed because his music was infinitely + unfinished (like the music of the spheres). + People seemed to want him to write cosy, homelike + music.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_3_ch_4" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page87" name="page87"></a>87</span>IV</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">SYMBOLISM IN MODERN ART</h3> + <div class="epigram"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>“So I drop downward from the wonderment</p> + <p>Of timelessness and space, in which were blent</p> + <p>The wind, the sunshine and the wanderings</p> + <p>Of all the planets—to the little things</p> + <p>That are my grass and flowers, and am content.”</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + <p>This prejudice against the infinite, or desire + to avoid as much as possible all personal + contact with it, betrays itself most commonly, + perhaps, in people who have what might be called + the domestic feeling, who consciously or unconsciously + demand the domestic touch in a + landscape before they are ready to call it beautiful. + The typical American woman, unless she + has unusual gifts or training, if she is left entirely + to herself, prefers nice cuddlesome scenery. + Even if her imagination has been somewhat + cultivated and deepened, so that she feels that + a place must be wild, or at least partly wild, in + order to be beautiful, she still chooses nooks + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page88" name="page88"></a>88</span>and ravines, as a rule, to be happy in—places + roofed in with gentle, quiet wonder, fenced in + with beauty on every side. She is not without + her due respect and admiration for a mountain, + but she does not want it to be too large, or too + near the stars, if she has to live with it day and + night; and if the truth were told—even at its + best she finds a mountain distant, impersonal, + uncompanionable. Unless she is born in it she + does not see beauty in the wide plain. There + is something in her being that makes her bashful + before a whole sky; she wants a sunset she + can snuggle up to. It is essentially the bird’s + taste in scenery. “Give me a nest, O Lord, + under the wide heaven. Cover me from Thy + glory.” A bush or a tree with two or three + other bushes or trees near by, and just enough + sky to go with it—is it not enough?</p> + + <p>The average man is like the average woman + in this regard except that he is less so. The + fact seems to be that the average human being + (like the average poet), at least for everyday + purposes, does not want any more of the world + around him than he can use, or than he can put + somewhere. If there is so much more of the + world than one can use, or than anyone else can + use, what is the possible object of living where + one cannot help being reminded of it?</p> + + <p>The same spiritual trait, a kind of gentle + persistent grudge against the infinite, shows + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page89" name="page89"></a>89</span>itself in the not uncommon prejudice against + pine trees. There are a great many people who + have a way of saying pleasant things about pine + trees and who like to drive through them or look + at them in the landscape or have them on other + people’s hills, but they would not plant a pine + tree near their houses or live with pines singing + over them and watching them, every day and + night, for the world. The mood of the pine is + such a vast, still, hypnotic, imperious mood that + there are very few persons, no matter how dull or + unsusceptible they may seem to be, who are + not as much affected by a single pine, standing + in a yard by a doorway, as they are by a whole + skyful of weather. If they are down on the infinite—they + do not want a whole treeful of it + around on the premises. And the pine comes + as near to being infinite as anything purely + vegetable, in a world like this, could expect. + It is the one tree of all others that profoundly + suggests, every time the light falls upon it or + the wind stirs through it, <span class="emphasized smaller_caps">the things that man + cannot touch</span>. Woven out of air and sunlight + and its shred of dust, it always seems to stand the + monument of the woods, to The Intangible, and + The Invisible, to the spirituality of matter. Who + shall find a tree that looks down upon the spirit + of the pine? And who, who has ever looked + upon the pines—who has seen them climbing the + hills in crowds, drinking at the sun—has not felt + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page90" name="page90"></a>90</span>that however we may take to them personally + they are the Chosen People among the trees? To + pass from the voice of them to the voice of + the common leaves is to pass from the temple + to the street. In the rest of the forest all the + leaves seem to be full of one another’s din—of + rattle and chatter—heedless, happy chaos, but + in the pines the voice of every pine-spill is as a + chord in the voice of all the rest, and the whole + solemn, measured chant of it floats to us as the + voice of the sky itself. It is as if all the mystical, + beautiful far-things that human spirits know + had come from the paths of Space, and from + the presence of God, to sing in the tree-trunks + over our heads.</p> + + <p>Now it seems to me that the supremacy of the + pine in the imagination is not that it is more + beautiful in itself than other trees, but that + the beauty of the pine seems more symbolic + than other beauty, and symbolic of more and of + greater things. It is full of the sturdiness and + strength of the ground, but it is of all trees the + tree to see the sky with, and its voice is the voice + of the horizons, the voice of the marriage of the + heavens and the earth; and not only is there + more of the sky in it, and more of the kingdom + of the air and of the place of Sleep, but there is + more of the fiber and odor from the solemn heart + of the earth. No other tree can be mutilated + like the pine by the hand of man and still keep + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page91" name="page91"></a>91</span>a certain earthy, unearthly dignity and beauty + about it and about all the place where it stands. + A whole row of them, with their left arms cut + off for passing wires, standing severe and stately, + their bare trunks against heaven, cannot help + being beautiful. The beauty is symbolic and + infinite. It cannot be taken away. If the entire + street-side of a row of common, ordinary + middle-class trees were cut away there would + be nothing to do with the maimed and helpless + things but to cut them down—remove their + misery from all men’s sight. To lop away the + half of a pine is only to see how beautiful the + other half is. The other half has the infinite in + it. However little of a pine is left it suggests + everything there is. It points to the universe + and beckons to the Night and the Day. The infinite + still speaks in it. It is the optimist, the + prophet of trees. In the sad lands it but grows + more luxuriantly, and it is the spirit of the + tropics in the snows. It is the touch of the infinite—of + everywhere—wherever its shadow falls. + I have heard the sound of a hammer in the street + and it was the sound of a hammer. In the pine + woods it was a hundred guns. As the cloud + catches the great empty spaces of night out of + heaven and makes them glorious the pine gathers + all sound into itself—echoes it along the infinite.</p> + + <p>The pine may be said to be the symbol of the + beauty in machinery, because it is beautiful the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92"></a>92</span>way an electric light is beautiful, or an electric-lighted + heaven. It has the two kinds of beauty + that belong to life: finite beauty, in that its + beauty can be seen in itself, and infinite beauty + in that it makes itself the symbol, the center, of + the beauty that cannot be seen, the beauty + that dwells around it.</p> + + <p>What is going to be called the typical power + of the colossal art, myriad-nationed, undreamed + of men before, now gathering in our modern + life, is its symbolic power, its power of standing + for more than itself.</p> + + <p>Every great invention of modern mechanical + art and modern fine art has held within it an + extraordinary power of playing upon associations, + of playing upon the spirits and essences + of things until the outer senses are all gathered + up, led on, and melted, as outer senses were + meant to be melted, into inner ones. What is + wrought before the eyes of a man at last by a + great modern picture is not the picture that + fronts him on the wall, but a picture behind the + picture, painted with the flame of the heart on + the eternal part of him. It is the business of a + great modern work of art to bring a man face + to face with the greatness from which it came. + Millet’s Angelus is a portrait of the infinite,—and + a man and a woman. A picture with this + feeling of the infinite painted in it—behind it—which + produces this feeling of the infinite in + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page93" name="page93"></a>93</span>other men by playing upon the infinite in their + own lives, is a typical modern masterpiece.</p> + + <p>The days when the infinite is not in our own + lives we do not see it. If the infinite is in our + own lives, and we do not like it there, we do + not like it in a picture, or in the face of a man, + or in a Corliss engine—a picture of the face of + All-Man, mastering the earth—silent—lifted to + heaven.</p> + </div> + + <div id="part_3_ch_5" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page94" name="page94"></a>94</span>V</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE MACHINES AS ARTISTS</h3> + <p>It is not necessary, in order to connect a railway + train with the infinite, to see it steaming + along a low sky and plunging into a huge white + hill of cloud, as I did the other day. It is quite + as infinite flying through granite in Hoosac + Mountain. Most people who do not think there + is poetry in a railway train are not satisfied with + flying through granite as a trait of the infinite in + a locomotive, and yet these same people, if a + locomotive could be lifted bodily to where infinity + is or is supposed to be (up in the sky + somewhere)—if they could watch one night after + night plowing through planets—would want a + poem written about it at once.</p> + + <p>A man who has a theory he does not see poetry + in a locomotive, does not see it because theoretically + he does not connect it with infinite things: + the things that poetry is usually about. The + idea that the infinite is not cooped up in heaven, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page95" name="page95"></a>95</span>that it can be geared and run on a track (and be + all the more infinite for not running off the + track), does not occur to him. The first thing + he does when he is told to look for the infinite + in the world is to stop and think a moment, + where he is, and then look for it somewhere + else.</p> + + <p>It would seem to be the first idea of the infinite, + in being infinite, not to be anywhere else. + It could not be anywhere else if it tried; and if a + locomotive is a real thing, a thing wrought in + and out of the fiber of the earth and of the lives + of men, the infinity and poetry in it are a matter + of course. I like to think that it is merely a + matter of seeing a locomotive as it is, of seeing + it in enough of its actual relations as it is, + to feel that it is beautiful; that the beauty, the + order, the energy, and the restfulness of the + whole universe are pulsing there through its + wheels.</p> + + <p>The times when we do not feel poetry in a + locomotive are the times when we are not matter-of-fact + enough. We do not see it in enough of its + actual relations. Being matter-of-fact enough + is all that makes anything poetic. Everything + in the universe, seen as it is, is seen as the symbol, + the infinitely connected, infinitely crowded + symbol of everything else in the universe—the + summing up of everything else—another whisper + of God’s.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page96" name="page96"></a>96</span>Have I not seen the great Sun Itself, from + out of its huge heaven, packed in a seed and + blown about on a wind? I have seen the leaves + of the trees drink all night from the stars, and + when I have listened with my soul—thousands + of years—I have heard The Night and The Day + creeping softly through mountains. People + called it geology.</p> + + <p>It seems that if a man cannot be infinite by + going to the infinite, he is going to be infinite + where he is. He is carving it on the hills, tunneling + it through the rocks of the earth, piling + it up on the crust of it, with winds and waters + and flame and steel he is writing it on all things—that + he is infinite, that he will be infinite. The + whole planet is his signature.</p> + + <p>If what the modern man is trying to say in + his modern age is his own infinity, it naturally + follows that the only way a modern artist can + be a great artist in a modern age is to say in that + age that man is infinite, better than any one else + is saying it.</p> + + <p>The best way to express this infinity of man is + to seek out the things in the life of the man + which are the symbols of his infinity—which + suggest his infinity the most—and then play on + those symbols and let those symbols play on + him. In other words the poet’s program is something + like this. The modern age means the + infinity of man. Modern art means symbolism + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page97" name="page97"></a>97</span>of man’s infinity. The best symbol of the + man’s infinity the poet can find, in this world + the man has made, is The Machine.</p> + + <p>At least it seems so to me. I was looking out + of my study window down the long track in the + meadow the other morning and saw a smoke-cloud + floating its train out of sight. A high wind + was driving, and in long wavering folds the cloud + lay down around the train. It was like a great + Bird, close to the snow, forty miles an hour. + For a moment it almost seemed that, instead + of a train making a cloud, it was a cloud propelling + a train—wing of a thousand tons. I have + often before seen a broken fog towing a mountain, + but never have I seen before, a train of cars + with its engine, pulled by the steam escaping + from its whistle. Of course the train out + in my meadow, with its pillar of fire by night and + of cloud by day hovering over it, is nothing + new; neither is the tower of steam when it + stands still of a winter morning building pyramids, + nor the long, low cloud creeping back on + the car-tops and scudding away in the light; + but this mad and splendid Thing of Whiteness + and Wind, riding out there in the morning, this + ghost of a train—soul or look in the eyes of it, + haunting it, gathering it all up, steel and thunder, + into itself, catching it away into heaven—was + one of the most magical and stirring sights + I have seen for a long time. It came to me like + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page98" name="page98"></a>98</span>a kind of Zeit-geist or passing of the spirit of the + age.</p> + + <p>When I looked again it was old 992 from the + roundhouse escorting Number Eight to Springfield.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_3_ch_6" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page99" name="page99"></a>99</span>VI</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE MACHINES AS PHILOSOPHERS</h3> + + <p>If we could go into History as we go into a + theatre, take our seats quietly, ring up the + vast curtain on any generation we liked, and then + could watch it—all those far off queer happy + people living before our eyes, two or three + hours—living with their new inventions and + their last wonders all about them, they would + not seem to us, probably to know why + they were happy. They would merely be + living along with their new things from day to + day, in a kind of secret clumsy gladness.</p> + + <p>Perhaps it is the same with us. The theories + for poems have to be arranged after we have + had them. The fundamental appeal of machinery + seems to be to every man’s personal everyday + instinct and experience. We have, most + of the time, neither words nor theories for it.</p> + + <p>I do not think that our case must stand or + fall with our theory. But there is something + comfortable about a theory. A theory gives one + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>100</span>permission to let ones self go—makes it seem + more respectable to enjoy things. So I suggest + something—the one I have used when I felt I + had to have one. I have partitioned it off by + itself and it can be skipped.</p> + + <p>1. The substance of a beautiful thing is its + Idea.</p> + <p>2. A beautiful thing is beautiful in proportion + as its form reveals the nature of its substance, + that is, conveys its idea.</p> + <p>3. Machinery is beautiful by reason of immeasurable + ideas consummately expressed.</p> + <p>4. Machinery has poetry in it because the + three immeasurable ideas expressed by machinery + are the three immeasurable ideas of poetry + and of the imagination and the soul—infinity + and the two forms of infinity, the liberty and + the unity of man.</p> + <p>5. These immeasurable ideas are consummately + expressed by machinery because machinery + expresses them in the only way that + immeasurable ideas can ever be expressed: (1) + by literally doing the immeasurable things, (2) + by suggesting that it is doing them. To the man + who is in the mood of looking at it with his + whole being, the machine is beautiful because it + is the mightiest and silentest symbol the world + contains of the infinity of his own life, and of + the liberty and unity of all men’s lives, which + slowly, out of the passion of history is now + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>101</span>being wrought out before our eyes upon the + face of the earth.</p> + <p>6. It is only from the point of view of a + nightingale or a sonnet that the æsthetic form + of a machine, if it is a good machine, can be criticised + as unbeautiful. The less forms dealing + with immeasurable ideas are finished forms the + more symbolic and speechless they are; the more + they invoke the imagination and make it build + out on God, and upon the Future, and upon + Silence, the more artistic and beautiful and + satisfying they are.</p> + <p>7. The first great artist a modern or machine + age can have, will be the man who brings out + for it the ideas behind its machines. These + ideas—the ones the machines are daily playing + over and about the lives of all of us—might be + stated roughly as follows:</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>The idea of the incarnation—the god in the body of the man.</p> + <p>The idea of liberty—the soul’s rescue from others.</p> + <p>The idea of unity—the soul’s rescue from its mere self.</p> + <p>The idea of the Spirit—the Unseen and Intangible.</p> + <p>The idea of immortality.</p> + <p>The cosmic idea of God.</p> + <p>The practical idea of invoking great men.</p> + <p>The religious idea of love and comradeship.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>And nearly every other idea that makes of + itself a song or a prayer in the human spirit.</p> + </div> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>102</span></p> +</div> + +<div id="Part_IV" class="part"> + <p class="part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>103</span>PART FOUR</p> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>104</span></p> + <h2 class="part_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>105</span>IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES</h2> + <div id="part_4_ch_1" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number">I</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF INCARNATION</h3> + <div class="epigram"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>“I sought myself through earth and fire and seas,</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>And found it not—but many things beside;</p> + <p>Behemoth old, Leviathans that ride.</p> + <p>And protoplasm, and jellies of the tide.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Then wandering upward through the solid earth</p> + <p>With its dim sounds, potential rage and mirth,</p> + <p>I faced the dim Forefather of my birth,</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>And thus addressed Him: ‘All of you that lie</p> + <p>Safe in the dust or ride along the sky—</p> + <p>Lo, these and these and these! But where am I?’”</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + <p>The grasshopper may be called the poet of + the insects. He has more hop for his + size than any of the others. I am very fond of + watching him—especially of watching those + two enormous beams of his that loom up on + either side of his body. They have always + seemed to me one of the great marvels of mechanics. + By knowing how to use them, he + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>106</span>jumps forty times his own length. A man who + could contrive to walk as well as any ordinary + grasshopper does (and without half trying) + could make two hundred and fifty feet at a + step. There is no denying, of course, that the + man does it, after his fashion, but he has to + have a trolley to do it with. The man seems + to prefer, as a rule, to use things outside to get + what he wants inside. He has a way of making + everything outside him serve him as if he had it + on his own body—uses a whole universe every + day without the trouble of always having to + carry it around with him. He gets his will out + of the ground and even out of the air. He lays + hold of the universe and makes arms and legs + out of it. If he wants at any time, for any reason, + more body than he was made with, he has his + soul reach out over or around the planet a + little farther and draw it in for him.</p> + + <p>The grasshopper, so far as I know, does not + differ from the man in that he has a soul and + body both, but his soul and body seem to be + perfectly matched. He has his soul and body + all on. It is probably the best (and the worst) + that can be said of a grasshopper’s soul, if he + has one, that it is in his legs—that he really + has his wits about him.</p> + + <p>Looked at superficially, or from the point of + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>107</span>view of the next hop, it can hardly be denied + that the body the human soul has been fitted + out with is a rather inferior affair. From the + point of view of any respectable or ordinarily + well-equipped animal the human body—the one + accorded to the average human being in the + great show of creation—almost looks sometimes + as if God really must have made it as a kind of + practical joke, in the presence of the other animals, + on the rest of us. It looks as if He had + suddenly decided at the very moment he was + in the middle of making a body for a man, that + out of all the animals man should be immortal—and + had let it go at that. With the exception + of the giraffe and perhaps the goose or + camel and an extra fold or so in the hippopotamus, + we are easily the strangest, the most + unexplained-looking shape on the face of the + earth. It is exceedingly unlikely that we are + beautiful or impressive, at first at least, to any + one but ourselves. Nearly all the things we do + with our hands and feet, any animal on earth + could tell us, are things we do not do as well as + men did once, or as well as we ought to, or as + well as we did when we were born. Our very + babies are our superiors.</p> + + <p>The only defence we are able to make when + we are arraigned before the bar of creation, + seems to be, that while some of the powers we + have exhibited have been very obviously lost, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>108</span>we have gained some very fine new invisible + ones. We are not so bad, we argue, after all,—our + nerves, for instance,—the mentalized + condition of our organs. And then, of course, + there is the superior quality of our gray matter. + When we find ourselves obliged to appeal in + this pathetic way from the judgment of the + brutes, or of those who, like them, insist on + looking at us in the mere ordinary, observing, + scientific, realistic fashion, we hint at our mysteriousness—a + kind of mesh of mysticism there + is in us. We tell them it cannot really be seen + from the outside, how well our bodies work. + We do not put it in so many words, but what + we mean is, that we need to be cut up to be + appreciated, or seen in the large, or in our more + infinite relations. Our matter may not be very + well arranged on us, perhaps, but we flatter + ourselves that there is a superior unseen spiritual + quality in it. It takes seers or surgeons to + appreciate us—more of the same sort, etc. In + the meantime (no man can deny the way things + look) here we all are, with our queer, pale, little + stretched-out legs and arms and things, floundering + about on this earth, without even our + clothes on, covering ourselves as best we can. + And what could really be funnier than a human + body living before The Great Sun under its + frame of wood and glass, all winter and all + summer … strange and bleached-looking, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>109</span>like celery, grown almost always under cloth, + kept in the kind of cellar of cotton or wool it + likes for itself, moving about or being moved + about, the way it is, in thousands of queer, + dependent, helpless-looking ways? The earth, + we can well believe, as we go up and down in + it is full of soft laughter at us. One cannot so + much as go in swimming without feeling the + fishes peeking around the rocks, getting their + fun out of us in some still, underworld sort of + way. We cannot help—a great many of us—feeling, + in a subtle way, strange and embarrassed + in the woods. Most of us, it is true, + manage to keep up a look of being fairly at + home on the planet by huddling up and living + in cities. By dint of staying carefully away + from the other animals, keeping pretty much + by ourselves, and whistling a good deal and + making a great deal of noise, called civilization, + we keep each other in countenance after a + fashion, but we are really the guys of the animal + world, and when we stop to think of it and face + the facts and see ourselves as the others see us, + we cannot help acknowledging it. I, for one, + rather like to, and have it done with.</p> + + <p>It is getting to be one of my regular pleasures + now, as I go up and down the world,—looking + upon the man’s body,—the little funny one that + he thinks he has, and then stretching my soul + and looking upon the one that he really has. + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>110</span>When one considers what a man actually does, + where he really lives, one sees very plainly that + all that he has been allowed is a mere suggestion + or hint of a body, a sort of central nerve or + ganglion for his real self. A seed or spore of + infinity, blown down on a star—held there by + the grip, apparently, of Nothing—a human body + is pathetic enough, looked at in itself. There + is something indescribably helpless and wistful + and reaching out and incomplete about it—a + body made to pray with, perhaps, one might + say, but not for action. All that it really comes + to or is for, apparently, is a kind of light there + is in it.</p> + + <p>But the sea is its footpath. The light that + is in it is the same light that reaches down to + the central fires of the earth. It flames upon + heaven. Helpless and unfinished-looking as it + is, when I look upon it, I have seen the animals + slinking to their holes before it, and worshipping, + or following the light that is in it. The + great waters and the great lights flock to it—this + beckoning and a prayer for a body, which + the man has.</p> + + <p>I go into the printing room of a great newspaper. + In a single flash of black and white the + press flings down the world for him—birth, + death, disgrace, honor and war and farce and + love and death, sea and hills, and the days on + the other side of the world. Before the dawn + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>111</span> + the papers are carried forth. They hasten on + glimmering trains out through the dark. Soon + the newsboys shrill in the streets—China and + the Philippines and Australia, and East and + West they cry—the voices of the nations of the + earth, and in my soul I worship the body of + the man. Have I not seen two trains full of the + will of the body of the man meet at full speed + in the darkness of the night? I have watched + them on the trembling ground—the flash of + light, the crash of power, ninety miles an hour + twenty inches apart, … thundering aisles + of souls … on into blackness, and in my + soul I worship the body of the man.</p> + + <p>And when I go forth at night, feel the earth + walking silently across heaven beneath my feet, + I know that the heart-beat and the will of the + man is in it—in all of it. With thousands of + trains under it, over it, around it, he thrills it + through with his will. I no longer look, since + I have known this, upon the sun alone, nor upon + the countenance of the hills, nor feel the earth + around me growing softly or resting in the + light, lifting itself to live. All that is, all that + reaches out around me, is the body of the man. + One must look up to stars and beyond horizons + to look in his face. Who is there, I have said, + that shall trace upon the earth the footsteps of + this body, all wireless telegraph and steel, or + know the sound of its going? Now, when I see + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>112</span>it, it is a terrible body, trembling the earth. + Like a low thunder it reaches around the crust + of it, grasping it. And now it is a gentle body + (oh, Signor Marconi!), swift as thought up over + the hill of the sea, soft and stately as the walking + of the clouds in the upper air.</p> + + <p>Is there any one to-day so small as to know + where he is? I am always coming suddenly + upon my body, crying out with joy like a child + in the dark, “And I am here, too!”</p> + + <p>Has the twentieth century, I have wondered, + a man in it who shall feel Himself?</p> + + <p>And so it has come to pass, this vision I have + seen with my own eyes—Man, my Brother, with + his mean, absurd little unfinished body, going + triumphant up and down the earth making + limbs of Time and Space. Who is there who + has not seen it, if only through the peephole of + a dream—the whole earth lying still and strange + in the hollow of his hand, the sea waiting upon + him? Thousands of times I have seen it, the + whole earth with a look, wrapped white and + still in its ball of mist, the glint of the Atlantic + on it, and in the blue place the vision of the + ships.</p> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Between the seas and skies</p> + <p>The Shuttle flies</p> + <p>Seven sunsets long, tropic-deep,</p> + <p>Thousand-sailed,</p> + <p>Half in waking, half in sleep.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>113</span>Glistening calms and shouting gales</p> + <p>Water-gold and green,</p> + <p>And many a heavenly-minded blue</p> + <p>It thrusts and shudders through,</p> + <p>Past my starlight,</p> + <p>Past the glow of suns I know,</p> + <p>Weaving fates,</p> + <p>Loves and hates</p> + <p>In the Sea—</p> + <p>The stately Shuttle</p> + <p>To and fro,</p> + <p>Mast by mast,</p> + <p>Through the farthest bounds of moons and noons.</p> + <p>Flights of Days and Nights</p> + <p>Flies fast.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>It may be true, as the poets are telling us, + that this fashion the modern man has, of reaching + out with steel and vapor and smoke, and + holding a star silently in his hand, has no poetry + in it, and that machinery is not a fit subject for + poets. Perhaps. I am merely judging for myself. + I have seen the few poets of this modern + world crowded into their corner of it (in Westminster + Abbey), and I have seen also a great + foundry chiming its epic up to the night, freeing + the bodies and the souls of men around the + world, beating out the floors of cities, making + the limbs of the great ships silently striding the + sea, and rolling out the roads of continents.</p> + + <p>If this is not poetry, it is because it is too + great a vision. And yet there are times I am + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>114</span>inclined to think when it brushes against us—against + all of us. We feel Something there. + More than once I have almost touched the edge + of it. Then I have looked to see the man wondering + at it. But he puts up his hands to his + eyes, or he is merely hammering on something. + Then I wish that some one would be born for + him, and write a book for him, a book that + should come upon the man and fold him in like + a cloud, breathe into him where his wonder is. + He ought to have a book that shall be to him + like a whole Age—the one he lives in, coming + to him and leaning over him, whispering to him, + “Rise, my Son and live. Dost thou not behold + thy hands and thy feet?”</p> + + <p>The trains like spirits flock to him.</p> + + <p>There are days when I can read a time-table. + When I put it back in my pocket it sings.</p> + + <p>In the time-table I carry in my pocket I + unfold the earth.</p> + + <p>I have come to despise poets and dreams. + Truths have made dreams pale and small. + What is wanted now is some man who is literal + enough to tell the truth.</p> + + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_2" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>115</span>II</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF SIZE</h3> + <p>Sometimes I have a haunting feeling that + the other readers of Mount Tom (besides me) + may not be so tremendously interested after all + in machinery and interpretations of machinery. + Perhaps they are merely being polite about the + subject while up here with me on the mountain, + not wanting to interrupt exactly and not talking + back. It is really no place for talking back, perhaps + they think, on a mountain. But the trouble + is, I get more interested than other people + before I know it. Then suddenly it occurs to me + to wonder if they are listening particularly and + are not looking off at the scenery and the river + and the hills and the meadow while I wander + on about railroad trains and symbolism and the + Mount Tom Pulp Mill and socialism and electricity + and Schopenhauer and the other things, + tracking out relations. It gets worse than other + people’s genealogies.</p> + + <p>But all I ask is, that when they come, as they + are coming now, just over the page to some + more of these machine ideas, or interpretations + as one might call them, or impressions, or orgies + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>116</span>with engines, they will not drop the matter altogether. + They may not feel as I do. It would + be a great disappointment to all of us, perhaps, + if I could be agreed with by everybody; but + boring people is a serious matter—boring them + all the time, I mean. It’s no more than fair, + of course, that the subscribers to a magazine + should run some of the risk—as well as the + editor—but I do like to think that in these + next few pages there are—spots, and that + people will keep hopeful.</p> + + <p class="large_thought_break">Some people are very fond of looking up at + the sky, taking it for a regular exercise, and + thinking how small they are. It relieves them. + I do not wish to deny that there is a certain + luxury in it. But I must say that for all + practical purposes of a mind—of having a mind—I + would be willing to throw over whole hours and + days of feeling very small, any time, for a single + minute of feeling big. The details are more + interesting. Feeling small, at best, is a kind of + glittering generality.</p> + + <p>I do not think I am altogether unaware how + I look from a star—at least I have spent days + and nights practising with a star, looking down + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>117</span>from it on the thing I have agreed for the time + being (whatever it is) to call myself, and I + have discovered that the real luxury for me does + not consist in feeling very small or even in + feeling very large. The luxury for me is in + having a regular reliable feeling, every day of + my life, that I have been made on purpose—and + very conveniently made, to be infinitely small + or infinitely large as I like. I arrange it any + time. I find myself saying one minute, “Are + not the whole human race my house-servants? + Is not London my valet—always at my door to + do my bidding? Clouds do my errands for me. + It takes a world to make room for my body. + My soul is furnished with other worlds I cannot + see.”</p> + + <p>The next minute I find myself saying nothing. + The whole star I am on is a bit of pale yellow + down floating softly through space. What I + really seem to enjoy is a kind of insured feeling. + Whether I am small or large all space cannot + help waiting upon me—now that I have taken + iron and vapor and light and made hands for + my hands, millions of them, and reached out + with them. A little one shall become a thousand. + I have abolished all size—even my own + size does not exist. If all the work that is being + done by the hands of my hands had literally to + be done by men, there would not be standing + room for them on the globe—comfortable + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>118</span>standing room. But even though, as it happens, + much of the globe is not very good to stand on, + and vast tracts of it, every year, are going to + waste, it matters nothing to us. Every thing + we touch is near or far, or large or small, as we + like. As long as a young woman can sit down + by a loom which is as good as six hundred more + just like her, and all in a few square feet—as + long as we can do up the whole of one of Napoleon’s + armies in a ball of dynamite, or stable + twelve thousand horses in the boiler of an ocean + steamer, it does not make very much difference + what kind of a planet we are on, or how large or + small it is. If suddenly it sometimes seems + as if it were all used up and things look cramped + again (which they do once in so often) we + have but to think of something, invent something, + and let it out a little. We move over into + a new world in a minute. Columbus was mere + bagatelle. We get continents every few days. + Thousands of men are thinking of them—adding + them on. Mere size is getting to be old-fashioned—as + a way of arranging things. It has never + been a very big earth—at best—the way God + made it first. He made a single spider that + could weave a rope out of her own body around + it. It can be ticked all through, and all around, + with the thoughts of a man. The universe + has been put into a little telescope and the oceans + into a little compass. Alice in Wonderland’s + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>119</span>romantic and clever way with a pill is become the + barest matter of fact. Looking at the world + a single moment with a soul instead of a theodolite, + no one who has ever been on it—before—would + know it. It’s as if the world were a little + wizened balloon that had been given us once + and had been used so for thousands of years, + and we had just lately discovered how to blow it.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_3" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>120</span>III</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF LIBERTY</h3> + <p>Some one told me one morning not so very + long ago that the sun was getting a mile + smaller across every ten years. It gave me a + shut-in and helpless feeling. I found myself + several times during that day looking at it + anxiously. I almost held my hands up to it to + warm them. I knew in a vague fashion that + it would last long enough for me. And a mile + in ten years was not much. It did not take + much figuring to see that I had not the slightest + reason to be anxious. But my feelings were hurt. + I felt as if something had hit the universe. I + could not get myself—and I have not been + able to get myself since—to look at it impersonally. + I suppose every man lives in + some theory of the universe, unconsciously, + every day, as much as he lives in the sunlight. + And he does not want it disturbed. I have + always felt safe before. And, what was a necessary + part of safety with me, I have felt that + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>121</span>history was safe—that there was going to be + enough of it.</p> + + <p>I have been in the world a good pleasant + while on the whole, tried it and got used to it—used + to the weather on it and used to having + my friends hate me and my enemies turn on + me and love me, and the other uncertainties; but + all the time, when I looked up at the sun and + saw it, or thought of it down under the world, + I counted on it. I discovered that my soul + had been using it daily as a kind of fulcrum for + all things. I helped God lift with it. It was + obvious that it was going to be harder for both + of us—a mere matter of time. I could not get + myself used to the thought. Every fresh look + I took at the sun peeling off mile after mile up + there, as fast as I lived, flustered me—made + my sky less useful to me, less convenient to + rest in. I found myself trying slowly to see + how this universe would look—what it would be + like, if I were the last man on it. Somebody + would have to be. It would be necessary to + justify things for him. He would probably be + too tired and cold to do it. So I tried.</p> + + <p>I had a good deal the same experience with + Mount Pelée last summer. I resented being + cooped up helplessly, on a planet that leaked.</p> + + <p>The fact that it leaked several thousand miles + away, and had made a comparatively safe hole + for it, out in the middle of the sea, only afforded + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>122</span>momentary relief. The hurt I felt was deeper + than that. It could not be remedied by a mere + applying long distances to it. It was underneath + down in my soul. Time and Space + could not get at it. The feeling that I had been + trapped in a planet somehow, and that I could + not get off possibly, the feeling that I had been + deliberately taken body and soul, without my + knowing it and without my ever having been + asked, and set down on a cooled-off cinder + to live, whether I wanted to or not—the sudden + new appalling sense I had, that the ground + underneath my feet was not really good and + solid, that I was living every day of my life + just over a roar of great fire, that I was + being asked (and everybody else) to make + history and build stone houses, and found institutions + and things on the bare outside—the + destroyed and ruined part of a ball that had + been tossed out in space to burn itself up—the + sense, on top of all this, that this dried crust + I live on, or bit of caked ashes, was liable to + break through suddenly at any time and pour + down the center of the earth on one’s head, + did not add to the dignity, it seemed to me, or + the self-respect of human life. “You might as + well front the facts, my dear youth, look Mount + Pelée in the face,” I tried to say coldly and + calmly to myself. “Here you are, set down + helplessly among stars, on a great round blue + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>123</span>and green something all fire and wind inside. + And it is all liable—this superficial crust or + geological ice you are on—perfectly liable, at + any time or any place after this, to let through + suddenly and dump all the nations and all + ancient and modern history, and you and Your + Book, into this awful ceaseless abyss—of boiled + mountains and stewed up continents that is + seething beneath your feet.”</p> + + <p>It is hard enough, it seems to me, to be an + optimist on the edge of this earth as it is, to + keep on believing in people and things on it, + without having to believe besides that the earth + is a huge round swindle just of itself, going round + and round through all heaven, with all of us + on it, laughing at us.</p> + + <p>I felt chilled through for a long time after + Mount Pelée broke out. I went wistfully about + sitting in sunny and windless places trying to + get warmed all summer. And it was not all in + my soul. It was not all subjective. I noticed + that the thermometer was caught the same way. + It was a plain case enough—it seemed to me—the + heater I lived on had let through, spilled out + and wasted a lot of its fire, and the ground + simply could not get warmed up after it. I sat + in the sun and pictured the earth freezing itself + up slowly and deliberately, on the outside. I + had it all arranged in my mind. The end of the + world was not coming as the ancients saw it, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>124</span>by a kind of overflow of fire, but by the fires + going out. A mile off the sun every ten years + (this for the loss of outside heat) and volcanoes + and things (for the inside heat), and gradually + between being frozen under us, and frozen over + us, both, both sides at once, the human race + would face the situation. We would have to + learn to live together. Any one could see that. + The human race was going to be one long row, + sometime—great nations of us and little ones + all at last huddled up along the equator to keep + warm. Just outside of this a little way, it + would be perfectly empty star, all in a swirl of + snowdrifts.</p> + + <p>I do not claim that it was very scientific to + feel in this way, but I have always had, ever + since I can remember, a moderate or decent + human interest in the universe as a universe, + and I had always felt as if the earth had made, + for all practical purposes, a sort of contract with + the human race, and when it acted like this—cooled + itself off all of a sudden, in the middle of + a hot summer, and all to show off a comparatively + unknown and unimportant mountain hid on an + island far out at sea—I could not conceal from + myself (in my present and usual capacity as a + kind of agent or sponsor for humanity) that + there was something distinctly jarring about it + and disrespectful. I felt as if we had been + trifled with. It was not a feeling I had very + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>125</span>long—this injured feeling toward the universe + in behalf of the man in it, but I could not help it + at first. There grew an anger within me and + then out of the anger a great delight. It seemed + to me I saw my soul standing afar off down + there, on its cold and emptied-looking earth.</p> + + <p>Then slowly I saw it was the same soul I had + always had. I was standing as I had always + stood on an earth before, be it a bare or flowering + one. I saw myself standing before all that was. + Then I defied the heaven over my head and + the ground under my feet not to keep me strong + and glad before God. I saw that it mattered + not to me, of an earth, how bare it was, or could + be, or could be made to be; if the soul of a man + could be kept burning on it, victory and gladness + would be alive upon it. I fell to thinking + of the man. I took an inventory down in my + being of all that the man was, of the might of + the spirit that was in him. Would it be anything + new to the man to be maltreated, a little, + neglected—almost outwitted by a universe? + Had he not already, thousands of times in the + history of this planet, flung his spirit upon the + cold, and upon empty space—and made homes + out of it? He had snuggled in icebergs. He + had entered the place of the mighty heat and + made the coolness of shadow out of it.</p> + + <p>It was nothing new. The planet had always + been a little queer. It was when it commenced. + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>126</span>The only difference would seem to be that, instead + of having the earth at first the way it is + going to be by and by apparently—an earth + with a little rim of humanity around it, great + nations toeing the equator to live—everything + was turned around. All the young nations + might have been seen any day crowded around + the ends or tips of the earth to keep from falling + into the fire that was still at work on the middle + of it, finishing it off and getting it ready to have + things happen on it. Boys might have been + seen almost any afternoon, in those early days, + going out to the north pole and playing duck + on the rock to keep from being too warm.</p> + + <p>It is a mere matter of opinion or of taste—the + way a planet acts at any given time. Now it + is one way and now another, and we do as we + like.</p> + + <p>I do not pretend to say in so many words if + the sun grew feeble, just what the man would + do, down in his snowdrifts. But I know he + would make some kind of summer out of them. + One cannot help feeling that if the sun went out, + it would be because he wanted it to—had arranged + something, if nothing but a good bit of + philosophy. It is not likely that the man has + defied the heavens and the earth all these centuries + for nothing. The things they have + done against him have been the making of him. + When he found this same sun we are talking + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>127</span>about, in the earliest days of all, was a sun + that kept running away from him and left him + in a great darkness half of every day he lived, + he knew what to do. Every time that Heaven + has done anything to him, he has had his answer + ready. The man who finds himself on a planet + that is only lighted part of the time, is merely + reminded that he must think of something. He + digs light out of the ground and glows up the + world with her own sap. When he finds himself + living on an earth that can only be said to be + properly heated a small fraction of the year, + he makes the earth itself to burn itself and keep + him warm. Things like this are small to us. + We put coal through a desire and take the breath + out of its dark body, and put it in pipes, and cook + our food with poisons. We take water and burn + it into air and we telegraph boilers, and flash + mills around the earth on poles. We move + vast machines with a little throb, like light. We + put a street on a wire. Great crowds in the + great cities—whole blocks of them—are handed + along day and night like dots and dashes in + telegrams. A man cannot be stopped by a + breath. We save a man up in his own whisper + hundreds of years when he is dead. A human + voice that reaches only a few yards makes + thousands of miles of copper talk. Then we + make the thousand miles talk without the + copper wire. We stand on the shore and beat + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>128</span>the air with a thought thousands of miles away—make + it whisper for us to ships. One need + not fear for a man like this—a man who has + made all the earth a deed, an action of his own + soul, who has thrown his soul at last upon the + waste of heaven and made words out of it. One + cannot but believe that a man like this is a free + man. Let what will happen to the sun that + warms him or the star that seems just now his + foothold in space. All shall be as his soul says + when his soul determines what it shall say. + Fire and wind and cold—when his soul speaks—and + Invisibility itself and Nothing are his + servants.</p> + + <p>The vision of a little helpless human race + huddled in the tropics saying its last prayers, + holding up its face to a far-off neglected-looking + universe, warming its hands at the stars—the + vision of all the great peoples of the earth + squeezed up into Esquimaux, in furs up to their + eyes, stamping their feet on the equator to keep + warm, is merely the sort of vision that one set + of scientists gloats on giving us. One needs but + to look for what the other set is saying. It has + not time to be saying much, but what it practically + says is: “Let the sun wizen up if it + wants to. There will be something. Somebody + will think of something. Possibly we are outgrowing + suns. At all events to a real man any + little accident or bruise to the planet he’s on + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>129</span>is a mere suggestion of how strong he is. Some + new beautiful impossibility—if the truth were + known—is just what we are looking for.”</p> + + <p>A human race which makes its car wheels + and napkins out of paper, its street pavements + out of glass, its railway ties out of old shoes, + which draws food out of air, which winds up + operas on spools, which has its way with oceans, + and plays chess with the empty ether that is + over the sea—which makes clouds speak with + tongues, which lights railway trains with pin-wheels + and which makes its cars go by stopping + them, and heats its furnaces with smoke—it + would be very strange if a race like this could + not find some way at least of managing its own + planet, and (heaped with snowdrifts though + it be) some way of warming it, or of melting off + a place to live on. A corporation was formed + down in New Jersey the other day to light a + city by the tossing of the waves. We are + always getting some new grasp—giving some + new sudden almost humorous stretch to matter. + We keep nature fairly smiling at herself. One + can hardly tell, when one hears of half the + new things nowadays—actual facts—whether to + laugh or cry, or form a stock company or break + out into singing. No one would dare to say that + a thousand years from now we will not have + found some other use for moonlight than for + love affairs and to haul tides with. We will + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>130</span>be manufacturing noon yet, out of compressed + starlight, and heating houses with it. It will + be peddled about the streets like milk, from + door to door in cases and bottles.</p> + + <p>First and last, whatever else may be said of us, + we do as we like with a planet. Nothing it can + do to us, nothing that can happen to it, outwits + us—at least more than a few hundred years + at a time. The idea that we cannot even keep + warm on it is preposterous. Nothing would be + more likely—almost any time now—than for + some one to decide that we ought to have our + continents warmed more, winters. It would + not be much, as things are going, to remodel the + floors of a few of our continents—put in registers + and things, have the heat piped up from the + center of the earth. The best way to get a + faint idea of what science is going to be like + the next few thousand years, is to pick out + something that could not possibly be so and + believe it. We manufacture ice in July by + boiling it, and if we cannot warm a planet as we + want to—at least a few furnished continents—with + hot things, we will do it with cold ones, or + by rubbing icebergs together. If one wants a + good simple working outfit for a prophet in + science and mechanics, all one has to do is to + think of things that are unexpected enough, and + they will come to pass. A scientist out in the + Northwest has just finished his plans for getting + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>131</span>hold of the other end of the force of gravity. + The general idea is to build a sort of tower or + flag-pole on the planet—something that reaches + far enough out over the edge to get an underhold + as it were—grip hold of the force of gravity + where it works backwards. Of course, as anyone + can see at a glance, when it is once built + out with steel, the first forty miles or so (workmen + using compressed air and tubular trolleys, + etc.), everything on the tower would pull the + other way and the pressure would gradually be + relieved until the thing balanced itself. When + completed it could be used to draw down electricity + from waste space (which has as much as + everybody on this planet could ever want, and + more). What a little earth like ours would + develop into, with a connection like this—a + sort of umbilical cord to the infinite—no one + would care to try to say. It would at least be + a kind of planet that would always be sure of + anything it wanted. When we had used up all + the raw material or live force in our own world + we could draw on the others. At the very + least we would have a sort of signal station to + the planets in general that would be useful. + They would know what we want, and if we + could not get it from them they would tell us + where we could.</p> + + <p>All this may be a little mixing perhaps. + It is always difficult to tell the difference between + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>132</span>the sublime and the ridiculous in talking + of a being like man. It is what makes him + sublime—that there is no telling about him—that + he is a great, lusty, rollicking, easy-going + son of God and throws off a world every now + and then, or puts one on, with quips and jests. + When the laugh dies away his jokes are prophecies. + It behooves us therefore to walk softly, + you and I, Gentle Reader, while we are here + with him—while this dear gentle ground is still + beneath our feet. There is no telling his reach. + Let us notice stars more.</p> + + <p>In the meantime it does seem to me that a + comparatively simple affair like this one single + planet, need not worry us much.</p> + + <p>I still keep seeing it—I cannot help it—I + always keep seeing it—eternities at a time, + warm, convenient, and comfortable, the same + old green and white, with all its improvements + on it, whatever the sun does. And above all I + keep seeing the Man on it, full of defiance and + of love and worship, being born and buried—the + little-great man, running about and strutting, + flying through space on it, all his interests and + his loves wound about it like clouds, but beckoning + to worlds as he flies. And whatever the Man + does with the other worlds or with this one, + I always keep seeing this one, the same old stand + or deck in eternity, for praying and singing and + living, it always was. Long after I am dead, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>133</span>oh, dear little planet, least and furthest breath + that is blown on thy face, my soul flocks to + you, rises around you, and looks back upon + you and watches you down there in your + round white cloud, rowing faithfully through + space!</p> + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_4" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>134</span>IV</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY</h3> + <p>If I had never thought of it before, and some + one were to come around to my study tomorrow + morning and tell me that I was immortal, + I am not at all sure that I would be attracted + by it. The first thing that I should do, probably, + would be to argue a little—ask him what + it was for. I might take some pains not to + commit myself (one does not want to settle a + million years in a few minutes), but I cannot + help being conscious, on the inside of my own + mind, at least, that the first thought on immortality + that would come to me, would be that + perhaps it might be overdoing things a little.</p> + + <p>I can speak only for myself. I am not unaware + that a great many men and women are + talking to-day about immortality and writing + about it. I know many people too, who, in a + faithful, worried way seem to be lugging about + with them, while they live, what they call a + faith in immortality. I would not mean to say + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>135</span>a word against immortality, if I were asked suddenly + and had never thought of it before. If by + putting out my hand I could get some of it, for + other people,—people that wanted it or thought + they did—I would probably. They would be + happier and easier to live with. I could watch + them enjoying the idea of how long they were + going to last. There would be a certain social + pleasure in it. But, speaking strictly for myself, + if I were asked suddenly and had never + heard of it before, I would not have the slightest + preference on the subject. It may be true, as + some say, that a man is only half alive if he + does not long to live forever, but while I have + the best wishes and intentions with regard to + my hope for immortality I cannot get interested. + I feel as if I were living forever now, + this very moment, right here on the premises—Universe, + Earth, United States of America, + Hampshire County, Northampton, Massachusetts. + I feel infinitely related every day and + hour and minute of my life, to an infinite number + of things. As for joggling God’s elbow or + praying to Him or any such thing as that, under + the circumstances, and begging Him to let me + live forever, it always seems to me (I have done + it sometimes when I was very tired) as if it + were a way of denying Him to His face. How + a man who is literally standing up to his soul’s + eyes, and to the tops of the stars in the infinite, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>136</span>who can feel the eternal throbbing through the + very pores of his body, can so far lose his sense + of humor in a prayer, or his reverence in it, as + to put up a petition to God to live forever, I + entirely fail to see. I always feel as if I had + stopped living forever—to ask Him.</p> + + <p>I have traveled in the blaze of a trolley car + when all the world was asleep, and have been + shot through still country fields in the great + blackness. All things that were—it seemed to + my soul, were snuffed out. It was as if all the + earth had become a whir and a bit of light—had + dwindled away to a long plunge, or roll and roar + through Nothing. Slowly as I came to myself + I said, “Now I will try to realize Motion. I + will see if I can know. I spread my soul about + me….” Ties flying under my feet, black + poles picked out with lights, flapping ghostlike + past the windows…. Voices of wheels over + and under…. The long, dreary waver of + the something that sounds when the car stops + (and which feels like taking gas) … the + semi-confidential, semi-public talk of the passengers, + the sudden collision with silence, they + come to, when the car halts—all these. Finally + when I look up every one has slipped away. + Then I find my soul spreading further and further. + The great night, silent and splendid, + builds itself over me. The night is the crowded + time to travel—car almost to one’s self, nothing + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>137</span>but a few whirls of light and a conductor for + company—the long monotone of miles—miles—flying + beside me and above and around and beneath—all + this shadowed world to belong to, to + dwell in, to pick out with one’s soul from Darkness. + “Here am I,” I said as the roar tightened + once more, and gripped on its awful wire and + glowed through the blackness. “Here I am in + infinite space, I and my bit of glimmer…. + Worlds fall about me. The very one I am on, + and stamp my feet on to know it is there, falls + and plunges with me out through deserts of + space, and stars I cannot see have their hand + upon me and hold me.”</p> + + <p>No one would deny that the idea of immortality + is a well-meaning idea and pleasantly inclined + and intended to be appreciative of a God, + but it does seem to me that it is one of the most + absent-minded ways of appreciating Him that + could be conceived. I am infinite at 88 High + Street. I have all the immortality I can use, + without going through my own front gate. I + have but to look out of a window. There is no + denying that Mount Tom is convenient, and as + a kind of soul-stepping-stone, or horse-block to + the infinite, the immeasurable and immortal, + a mountain may be an advantage, perhaps, + and make some difference; but I must confess + that it seems to me that in all times and in all + places a man’s immortality is absolutely in his + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>138</span>own hands. His immortality consists in his + being in an immortally related state of mind. + His immortality is his sense of having infinite + relations with all the time there is, and his infinity + consists in his having infinite relations + with all the space there is. Wherever, as a + matter of form, a man may say he is living or + staying, the universe is his real address.</p> + + <p>I have been at sea—lain with a board over + me out in the wide night and looked at the infinite + through a port-hole. Over the edge of the + swash of a wave I have gathered in oceans and + possessed them. Under my board in the night + I have lain still with the whole earth and mastered + it in my heart, shared it until I could not + sleep with the joy of it—the great ship with all + its souls throbbing a planet through me and + chanting it to me. I thought to my soul, + “Where art thou?” I looked down upon myself + as if I were a God looking down on myself + and upon the others, and upon the ship and + upon the waters.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>A thousand breaths we lie</p> + <p>Shrouded limbs and faces</p> + <p>Horizontal</p> + <p>Packed in cases</p> + <p>In our named and numbered places,</p> + <p>Catalogued for sleep,</p> + <p>Trembling through the Godlight</p> + <p>Below, above,</p> + <p>Deep to Deep.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>139</span>How a church-going man in a world like this + can possibly contrive to have time to cry out or + worry on it, or to be troubled about another—how + he can demand another, the way he does + sometimes, as if it were the only thing left a + God could do to straighten matters out for having + put him on this one, and how he can call + this religion—is a problem that leaves my mind + like an exhausted receiver. It is a grave question + whether any immortality they are likely to + get in another world would ever really pay some + people for the time they have wasted in this + one, worrying about it.</p> + + <p>Does any science in the world suppose or dare + to suppose that I am as unimportant in it as I + look—or that I could be if I tried? that I am a + parasite rolled up in a drop of dew, down under + a shimmering mist of worlds that do not serve + me nor care for me? I swear daily that I am + not living and that I will not and cannot live + underneath a universe … with a little horizon + or teacup of space set down over me. The + whole sky is the tool of my daily life. It belongs + to me and I to it. I have said to the + heavens that they shall hourly minister to me—to + the uses of my spirit and the needs of my + body. When I, or my spirit, would move a + little I swing out on stars. In the watches of + the night they reach under my eyelids and serve + my sleep and wait on me with dreams, I know + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>140</span>I am immortal because I know I am infinite. + A man is at least as long as he is wide. There + is no need to quibble with words. I care little + enough whether I am supposed to say it is forever + across my soul or everywhere across it. + Whichever it is, I make it the other when I am + ready. If a man is infinite and lives an infinitely + related life, why should it matter whether + he is eternal as he calls it or not,—takes his + immortality sideways here, now, and in the + terms of space or later with some kind of time-arrangement + stretched out and petering along + over a long, narrow row of years?</p> + + <p>Thousands of things are happening that are + mine—out, around, and through the great darkness—being + born and killed and ticked and + printed while I sleep. When I have stilled myself + with sleep, do I not know that the lightning + is waiting on me? When I see a cloud of steam + I say, “There is my omnipresence.” My being + is busy out in the universe having its way somewhere. + The days on the other side of the world + are my days. I get what I want out of them + without having to keep awake for them. In + the middle of the night and without trying I lay + my hand on the moon. It is my moon, wherever + it may be, or whether I so much as look upon + it, and when I do look upon it it is no roof for + me, and the stars behind it flow in my veins.</p> + + <h4 class="section_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>141</span>II</h4> + + <p>I have been reading lately a book on Immortality, + the leading idea of which seems to be a + sort of astral body for people—people who are + worthy of it. The author does not believe after + the old-fashioned method that we are going to + the stars. He intimates (for all practical purposes) + that we do not need to. The stars are + coming to us,—are already being woven in us. + The author does not say it in so many words, + but the general idea seems to be that the more + spiritual or subtle body we are going to have, + is already started in us—if we live as we should—growing + like a kind of lining for this one.</p> + + <p>I can only speak for one, but I find that when + I am willing to take the time from reading books + on immortality to enjoy a few infinite experiences, + I am not apt to be troubled very much + about another world.</p> + + <p>It is daily obvious to me that I belong and + that I am living in an infinite and eternal world, + inconceivably better planned and managed than + one of mine would be, and the only logical thing + that I can do, is to take it for granted that the + next one is even better than this. If the main + feature of the next world consists in there not + being one, then so much the better. I would + not have thought so. It seems a little abrupt + at this moment, perhaps, but it is a mere detail + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>142</span>and why not leave it to God to work it out? + He doesn’t have to neglect anything to do it—which + is what we do—and He is going to do it + anyway.</p> + + <p>I have refused to take time from my infinity + now for a theory of a theory about some new + kind by and by. I have but to stand perfectly + still. There is an infinite opening and shutting + of doors for me, through all the heavens and the + earth. I lie with my head in the deep grass. A + square yard is forever across. I listen to a + great city in the grass—millions of insects. + Microscopes have threaded it for me. I know + their city—all its mighty little highways. I + possess it. And when I walk away I rebuild + their city softly in my heart. Winds, tides, and + vapors are for me everywhere, that my soul may + possess them. I reach down to the silent metals + under my feet that millions of ages have worked + on, and fire and wonder and darkness. I feel + the sun and the lives of nations flowing around + to me, from under the sea. Who can shut me + out from anybody’s sunrise?</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>“Oh, tenderly the haughty day</p> + <p>Fills his blue urn with fire;</p> + <p>One morn is in the mighty heaven</p> + <p>And one in my desire.”</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>I play with the Seasons, with all the weathers + on earth. I can telegraph for them. I go to + <span class = "pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>143</span>the weather I want. The sky—to me—is no + longer a great, serious, foreign-looking shore, + conducting a big foolish cloud-business, sending + down decrees of weather on helpless cities. + With a whistle and a roar I defy it—move any + strip of it out from over me—for any other + strip. I order the time of year. It is my sky. + I bend it a little—just a little. The sky no + longer has a monopoly of wonder. With the + hands of my hands, my brother and I have + made an earth that can answer a sky back, that + can commune with a sky. The soul at last + guesses at its real self. It reaches out and + dares. Men go about singing with telescopes. + I do not always need to lift my hands to a sky + and pray to it now. I am related to it. With + the hands of my hands I work with it. I say + “I and the sky.” I say “I and the Earth.” + We are immortal because we are infinite. We + have reached over with the hands of our hands. + They are praying a stupendous prayer—a kind + of god’s prayer. God’s hand has been grasped—vaguely—wonderfully + out in the Dark. No + longer is the joy of the universe to a man, one + of his great, solemn, solitary joys. The sublime + itself is a neighborly thought. God’s + machine—up—There—and the machines of the + man have signaled each other.</p> + + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_5" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>144</span>V</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF GOD</h3> + <p>My study (not the place where I get my + knowledge but the place where I put it + together) is a great meadow—ten square splendid + level miles of it—as fenceless and as open as a sky—merely + two mountains to stand guard. If + <span class="keep_together">H——</span> the scientist who lives nearest to me + (that is; nearest to my mind,) were to come + down to me to-morrow morning, down in my + meadow, with its huge triangle of trolleys and + railways humming gently around the edges + and tell me that he had found a God, I would + not believe it. “Where?” I would say, “in + which Bottle?” I have groped for one all these + years. Ever since I was a child I have been + groping for a God. I thought one had to. I have + turned over the pages of ancient books and + hunted in morning papers and rummaged in the + events of the great world and looked on the + under sides of leaves and guessed on the other + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>145</span>sides of the stars and all in vain. I never could + make out to find a God in that way. I wonder + if anyone can.</p> + + <p>I know it is not the right spirit to have, but + I must confess that when the scientist (the + smaller sort of scientist around the corner in my + mind and everybody’s mind) with all his retorts + and things, pottering with his argument of design, + comes down to me in my meadow and reminds + me that he has been looking for a God and tells + me cautiously and with all his kind, conscientious + hems and haws that he has found Him, I + wonder if he has.</p> + + <p>The very necessity a man is under of seeking + a God at all, in a world alive all over like this, + of feeling obliged to go on a long journey to + search one out makes one doubt if the kind of + God he would find would be worth while. I + have never caught a man yet who has found + his God in this way, enjoying Him or getting + anyone else to.</p> + + <p>It does seem to me that the idea of a God is + an absolutely plain, rudimentary, fundamental, + universal human instinct, that the very essence + of finding a God consists in His not having to + be looked for, in giving one’s self up to one’s plain + every-day infinite experiences. I suppose if + it could be analyzed, the poet’s real quarrel + with the scientist is not that he is material, but + that he is not material enough,—he does not + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>146</span>conceive matter enough to find a God. I cannot + believe for instance that any man on earth to + whom the great spectacle of matter going on + every day before his eyes is a scarcely noticed + thing—any man who is willing to turn aside + from this spectacle—this spectacle as a whole—and + who looks for a God like a chemist in a + bottle for instance—a bottle which he places + absolutely by itself, would be able to find one if + he tried. It seems to me that it is by letting + one’s self have one’s infinite—one’s infinitely + related experiences, and not by cutting them off + that one comes to know a God. To find a God + who is everywhere one must at least spend a + part of one’s time in being everywhere one’s self—in + relating one’s knowledge to all knowledge.</p> + + <p>There are various undergirding arguments + and reasons, but the only way that I really + know there is an infinite God is because I am + infinite—in a small way—myself. Even the + matter that has come into the world connected + with me, and that belongs to me, is infinite. + If my soul, like some dim pale light left burning + within me, were merely to creep to the boundaries + of its own body, it would know there was a + God. The very flesh I live with every day is + infinite flesh. From the furthest rumors of + men and women, the furthest edge of time and + space my soul has gathered dust to itself. + I carry a temple about with me. If I could + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>147</span>do no better, and if there were need, I am my + own cathedral. I worship when I breathe. + I bow down before the tick of my pulse. I chant + to the palm of my hand. The lines in the tips of + my fingers could not be duplicated in a million + years. Shall any man ask me to prove there + are miracles or to put my finger on God? or to go + out into some great breath of emptiness or argument + to be sure there is a God? I am infinite. + Therefore there is a God. I feel daily the God + within me. Has He not kindled the fire in + my bones and out of the burning dust warmed + me before the stars—made a hearth for my + soul before them? I am at home with them. + I sit daily before worlds as at my own fireside.</p> + + <p>I suppose there is something intolerant and + impatient and a little heartless about an optimist—especially + the kind of optimism that is based + upon a simple everyday rudimentary joy in the + structure of the world. There is such a thing, + I suppose, with some of us, as having a kind of + devilish pride in faith, as one would say to + ordinary mortals and creepers and considerers + and arguers “Oh now just see me believe!” + We are like boys taking turns jumping in the + Great Vacant Lot, seeing which can believe the + furthest. We need to be reminded that a man + cannot simply bring a little brag to God, about + His world, and make a religion out of it. I do + not doubt in the least, as a matter of theory, + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>148</span>that I have the wrong spirit—sometimes—toward + the scientific man who lives around the + corner of my mind. It seems to me he is always + suggesting important-looking unimportant + things. I have days of sympathizing with him, + of rolling his great useless heavy-empty pack up + upon my shoulders and strapping it there. + But before I know it I’m off. I throw it away + or melt it down into a tablet or something—put + it in my pocket. I walk jauntily before God.</p> + + <p>And the worst of it is, I think He intended + me to. I think He intended me to know and to + keep knowing daily what He has done for me + and is doing now, out in the universe, and + what He has made me to do. I also am a God. + From the first time I saw the sun I have been + one daily. I have performed daily all the + homelier miracles and all the common functions + of a God. I have breathed the Invisible into + my being. Out of the air of heaven I have + made flesh. I have taken earth from the earth + and burned it within me and made it into prayers + and into songs. I have said to my soul “To + eat is to sing.” I worship all over. I am my + own sacrament. I lay before God nights of + sleep, and the delight and wonder of the flesh I + render back to Him again, daily, as an offering + in His sight.</p> + + <p>And what is true of my literal body—of the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>149</span>joy of my hands and my feet, is still more true + of the hands of my hands.</p> + + <p>When I wake in the night and send forth my + thought upon the darkness, track out my own + infinity in it, feel my vast body of earth and sky + reaching around me, all telegraphed through with + thought, and floored with steel, I may have + to grope for a God a little (I do sometimes), + but I do it with loud cheers. I sing before the + door of heaven if there is a heaven or needs + to be a heaven. When I look upon the glory + of the other worlds, has not science itself told + me that they are a part of me and I a part of + them? Nothing is that would not be different + without something else. My thoughts are + ticking through the clouds, and the great sun + itself is creeping through me daily down in my + bones. The steam cloud hurries for me on a + hundred seas. I turn over in my sleep at midnight + and lay my hand on the noon. And + when I have slept and walk forth in the morning, + the stars flow in my veins. Why should a man + dare to whine? “Whine not at me!” I have + said to man my brother. If you cannot sing + to me do not interrupt me.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Let him sing to me</p> + <p>Who sees the watching of the stars above the day,</p> + <p>Who hears the singing of the sunrise</p> + <p>On its way</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>150</span>Through all the night.</p> + <p>Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms,</p> + <p>Whose soul has roamed</p> + <p>Infinite-homed</p> + <p>Through tents of Space,</p> + <p>His hand in the dim Great Hand that forms</p> + <p>All wonder.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Let him sing to me</p> + <p>Who is The Sky Voice, The Thunder Lover</p> + <p>Who hears above the wind’s fast-flying shrouds</p> + <p>The drifted darkness, the heavenly strife,</p> + <p>The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds,</p> + <p>Of His Own Life.</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_6" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>151</span>VI</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF THE UNSEEN AND INTANGIBLE</h3> + <h4 class="ode_title">AN ODE TO THE UNSEEN</h4> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Poets of flowers, singers of nooks in Space,</p> + <p>Petal-mongers, embroiderers of words</p> + <p>In the music-haunted houses of the birds,</p> + <p>Singers with the thrushes and pewees</p> + <p>In the glimmer-lighted roofs</p> + <p>Of the trees—</p> + <p>Unhand my soul!</p> + <p>Buds with singing in their hearts,</p> + <p>Birds with blooms upon their wings,</p> + <p>All the wandering whispers of delight,</p> + <p>The near familiar things;</p> + <p>Voice of pine trees, winds of daisies,</p> + <p>Sounds of going in the grain</p> + <p>Shall not bind me to thy singing</p> + <p>When the sky with God is ringing</p> + <p>For the Joy of the Rain.</p> + <p>Sea and star and hill and thunder,</p> + <p>Dawn and sunset, noon and night,</p> + <p>All the vast processional of the wonder</p> + <p>Where the worlds are,</p> + <p>Where my soul is,</p> + <p>Where the shining tracks are</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>152</span>For the spirit’s flight—</p> + <p>Lift thine eyes to these</p> + <p>From the haunts of dewdrops,</p> + <p>Hollows of the flowers,</p> + <p>Caves of bees</p> + <p>That sing like thee,</p> + <p>Only in their bowers;</p> + <p>From the stately growing cities</p> + <p>Of the little blowing leaves,</p> + <p>To the infinite windless eaves</p> + <p>Of the stars;</p> + <p>From the dainty music of the ground,</p> + <p>The dim innumerable sound</p> + <p>Of the Mighty Sun</p> + <p>Creeping in the grass,</p> + <p>Softest stir of His feet</p> + <p>(Where they go</p> + <p>Far and slow</p> + <p>On their immemorial beat</p> + <p>Of buds and seeds</p> + <p>And all the gentle and holy needs</p> + <p>Of flowers),</p> + <p>To the old eternal round</p> + <p>Of the Going of His Might,</p> + <p>Above the confines of the dark,</p> + <p>Odors and winds and showers,</p> + <p>Day and night,</p> + <p>Above the dream of death and birth</p> + <p>Flickering East and West,</p> + <p>Boundaries of a Shadow of an Earth—</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>153</span>Where He wheels</p> + <p>And soars</p> + <p>And plays</p> + <p>In illimitable light,</p> + <p>Sends the singing stars upon their ways</p> + <p>And on each and every world</p> + <p>When The Little Shadow for its Little Sleep</p> + <p>Is furled—</p> + <p>Pours the Days.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p class="ode_thought_break">•••</p> + + <p>The first time I gazed in the great town upon + a solid mile of electric cars—threaded with + Nothing—mesmerism hauling a whole city + home to supper, it seemed to me as if the + central power of all things, The Thing that + floats and breathes through the universe, must + have been found by someone—gathered up + from between stars, and turned on—poured + down gently on the planet—falling on a thousand + wheels, and run on the tops of cars—the secret + thrill that softly and out in the darkness and + through all ages had done all things. I felt + as if I had seen the infinite in some near familiar, + humdrum place. I walked on in a dazed + fashion. I do not suppose I could really have + been more surprised if I had met a star walking + in the street.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>In my deepest dream</p> + <p>I heard the Song</p> + <p>Running in my sleep</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>154</span>Through the lowest caves of Being</p> + <p>Down below</p> + <p>Where no sound is, sun is,</p> + <p>Hearing, seeing</p> + <p>That men know.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>There was something about it, about that + sense of the mile of cars moving, that made + it all seem very old.</p> + + <h4 class="ode_title">An Ode to the Lightning.</h4> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Before the first new dust of dream God took</p> + <p>For making man and hope and love and graves</p> + <p>Had kindled to its fate. Before the floods</p> + <p>Had folded round the hills. Before the rainbow</p> + <p>Born of cloud had taught the sky its tints,</p> + <p>The Lightning Minstrel was. The cry of Vague</p> + <p>To Vague. The Chaos-voice that rolled and crept</p> + <p>From out the pale bewildered wonder-stuff</p> + <p>That wove the worlds,</p> + <p>Before the Hand had stirred that touched them,</p> + <p>While still, hinged on nothing,</p> + <p>Dim and shapeless Things</p> + <p>And clouds with groping sleep upon their wings</p> + <p>Floated and waited.</p> + <p>Before the winds had breathed the breath of life</p> + <p>Or blown from wastes of Space</p> + <p>To Earth’s creating place,</p> + <p>The souls of seeds</p> + <p>And ghosts of old dead stars,</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>155</span>The Lightning Spirit willed</p> + <p>Their feet with wonder should be thrilled.</p> + <p>—Primal fire of all desire</p> + <p>That leaps from men to men,</p> + <p>Brother of Suns</p> + <p>And all the Glorious Ones</p> + <p>That circle skies,</p> + <p>He flashed to these</p> + <p>The night that brought the birth,</p> + <p>The vision of the place</p> + <p>And raised his awful face</p> + <p>To all their glittering crowds,</p> + <p>And cried from where It lay</p> + <p>—A tiny ball of fire and clay</p> + <p>In swaddling clothes of clouds,</p> + <p>“Behold the Earth!”</p> + </div> + + <p class="ode_thought_break">•••••••</p> + <p class="ode_thought_break">•••••••</p> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Oh heavenly feet of The Hot Cloud! Bringer</p> + <p>Of the garnered airs. Herald of the shining rains!</p> + <p>Looser of the locked and lusty winds from their misty caves.</p> + <p>Opener of the thousand thousand-gloried doors twixt heaven</p> + <p>And heaven and Heaven’s heaven. Oh thou whose play</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>156</span>Men make to do their work (<em>Why do their work?</em>)</p> + <p>—And call from holidays of space, sojourns</p> + <p>Of suns and moons, and lock to earth</p> + <p>(<em>Why lock to earth?</em>)</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p class="ode_thought_break_2">That the Dead Face may flash across the seas</p> + <p>The cry of the new-born babe be heard around</p> + <p>A world. Ah me! and the click of lust</p> + <p>And the madness and the gladness and the ache</p> + <p>Of Dust, Dust!</p> + </div> + </div> + + <h4 class="section_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>157</span>AN ODE TO THE TELEGRAPH WIRES.</h4> + <p class="ode_subtitle">THE SONG THE WORLD SANG LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE</p> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>The mortal wires of the heart of the earth</p> + <p>I sing, melted and fused by men,</p> + <p>That the immortal fires of their souls should fling</p> + <p>To eaves of heaven and caves of sea,</p> + <p>And God Himself, and farthest hills and dimmest bounds of sense</p> + <p>The flame of the Creature’s ken,</p> + <p>The flame of the glow of the face of God</p> + <p>Upon the face of men.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Wind-singing wires</p> + <p>Along their thousand airy aisles,</p> + <p>Feet of birds and songs of leaves,</p> + <p>Glimmer of stars and dewy eves.</p> + <p>Sea-singing wires</p> + <p>Along their thousand slimy miles,</p> + <p>Shadowy deeps,</p> + <p>Unsunned steeps,</p> + <p>Beating in their awful caves</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>158</span>To mouthing fish and bones</p> + <p>And weeds unfurled</p> + <p>Deserts of waves</p> + <p>The heart-beat of this upper world.</p> + <p>Infinite blue, infinite green,</p> + <p>Infinite glory of the ear</p> + <p>Ticking its passions through</p> + <p>Infinite fear,</p> + <p>Ooze of storm, sodden and slanting wrecks</p> + <p>The forever untrodden decks</p> + <p>Of Death,</p> + <p>Ever the seething wires</p> + <p>On the floors</p> + <p>Of the world,</p> + <p>Below the last</p> + <p>Locked fast</p> + <p>Water-darkened doors</p> + <p>Of the sun,</p> + <p>Lighting the awful signal fires</p> + <p>Of our speechless vast desires</p> + <p>On the mountains and the hills</p> + <p>Of the sea</p> + <p>Till the sandy-buried heights</p> + <p>And the sullen sunken vales</p> + <p>And fire-defying barrens of the deep</p> + <p>The hearth of souls shall be</p> + <p>Beacons of Thought,</p> + <p>And from the lurk of the shark</p> + <p>To the sunrise-lighted eerie of the lark</p> + <p>And where the farthest cloud-sail fills</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>159</span>Shall be felt the throbbing and the sobbing and the hoping</p> + <p>The might and mad delight,</p> + <p>The hell-and-heaven groping</p> + <p>Of our little human wills.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <h4 class="section_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>160</span>AN ODE TO THE WIRELESS</h4> + <p class="ode_subtitle">THE PRAYER OF MAN THROUGH ALL THE YEARS IN WHICH THE SKY-TELEGRAPH WOULD NOT WORK</p> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Roofed in with fears,</p> + <p>Beneath its little strip of sky</p> + <p>That is blown about</p> + <p>In and out</p> + <p>Across my wavering strip of years—</p> + <p>Who am I</p> + <p>Whose singing scarce doth reach</p> + <p>The cloud-climbed hills,</p> + <p>To take upon my lips the speech</p> + <p>Of those whose voices Heaven fills</p> + <p>With splendor?</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>And yet—</p> + <p>I cannot quite forget</p> + <p>That in the underdawn of dreams</p> + <p>I have felt the faint surmise</p> + <p>Shining through the starry deep of my sleep</p> + <p>That I with God went singing once</p> + <p>Up and down with suns and storms</p> + <p>Through the phantom-pillared forms</p> + <p>And stately-silent naves</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>161</span>And thunder-dreaming caves</p> + <p>Of Heaven.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Great Spirit—Thou who in my being’s burning mesh</p> + <p>Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh,</p> + <p>Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust</p> + <p>Hast thrust</p> + <p>Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights,</p> + <p>Where are the deeds that needs must be,</p> + <p>The dreams, the high delights,</p> + <p>That I once more may hear my voice</p> + <p>From cloudy door to door rejoice—</p> + <p>May stretch the boundaries of love</p> + <p>Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears</p> + <p>To the faint-remembered glory of those years—</p> + <p>May lift my soul</p> + <p>And reach this Heaven of thine</p> + <p>With mine?</p> + <p>Where are the gleams?</p> + <p>Thou shalt tell me,</p> + <p>Shalt compel me.</p> + <p>The sometime glory shall return</p> + <p>I know.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>The day shall be</p> + <p>When by wondering I shall learn</p> + <p>With vapor-fingers to discern</p> + <p>The music-hidden keys of skies—</p> + <p>Shall touch like thee</p> + <p>Until they answer me</p> + <p>The chords of the silent air</p> + <p>And strike the wild and slumber-music out</p> + <p>Dreaming there.</p> + <p>Above the hills of singing that I know</p> + <p>On the trackless, soundless path</p> + <p>That wonder hath</p> + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>162</span>I shall go,</p> + <p>Beyond the street-cry of the poet,</p> + <p>The hurdy-gurdy singing</p> + <p>Of the throngs,</p> + <p>To the Throne of Silence,</p> + <p>Where the Doors</p> + <p>That guard the farthest faintest shores</p> + <p>Of Day</p> + <p>Swing their bars,</p> + <p>And shut the songs of heaven in</p> + <p>From all our dreaming-doing din,</p> + <p>Behind the stars.</p> + </div> + + <div class="stanza"> + <p>There, at last,</p> + <p>The climbing and the singing passed,</p> + <p>And the cry,</p> + <p>My hushed and listening soul shall lie</p> + <p>At the feet of the place</p> + <p>Where the Singer sings</p> + <p>Who Hides His Face.</p> + </div> + </div> + + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_7" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>163</span>VII</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF GREAT MEN</h3> + <div class="epigram"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>“I had a vision under a green hedge</p> + <p>A hedge of hips and haws—Men yet shall hear</p> + <p>Archangels rolling over the high mountains</p> + <p>Old Satan’s empty skull.”</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + <p>As it looks from <span class="emphasized">Mount Tom</span>, casting a general + glance around, the Earth has about been put + into shape, now, to do things.</p> + + <p>The Earth has never been seen before looking + so trim and convenient—so ready for action—as + it is now. Steamships and looms and printing + presses and railways have been supplied, wireless + telegraph furnishings have lately been arranged + throughout, and we have put in speaking tubes + on nearly all the continents, and it looks—as + seen from Mount Tom, at least, as if the planet + were just being finished up, now, for a Great + Author.</p> + + <p>It is true that art and literature do not have, + at first glance, a prosperous look in a machine + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>164</span>age, but probably the real trouble the modern + world is having with its authors is not because + it is a world full of materialism and machinery, + but because its authors are the wrong size.</p> + + <p>The modern world as it booms along recognizes + this, in its practical way, and instead of + stopping to speak to its little authors, to its + poets crying beside it, and stooping to them and + encouraging them, it is quietly and sensibly + (as it seems to some of us) going on with its + machines and things making preparations for + bigger ones.</p> + + <p>I have thought the great authors in every + age were made by the greatness of the listening + to them. The greatest of all, I notice, have felt + listened to by God. Even the lesser ones (who + have sometimes been called greatest) have felt + listened to, most of them, one finds, by nothing + less than nations. The man Jesus gathers + kingdoms about Him in His talk, like an infant + class. It was the way He felt. Almost any one + who could have felt himself listened to in this + daring way that Jesus did would have managed + to say something. He could hardly have missed, + one would think, letting fall one or two great + ideas at least—ideas that nations would be + born for.</p> + + <p>It ought not to be altogether without meaning + to a modern man that the great prophets and + interpreters have talked as a rule to whole + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>165</span>nations and that they have talked to them + generally, too, for the glory of the whole earth. + They could not get their souls geared smaller + than a whole earth. Shakspeare feels the generations + stretching away like galleries around + him listening—when he makes love. It was no + particular heroism or patience in the man + Columbus that made him sail across an ocean + and discover a continent. He had the girth + of an earth in him and had to do something + with it. He could not have helped it. He + discovered America because he felt crowded.</p> + + <p>One would think from the way some people + have of talking or writing of immortality + that it must be a kind of knack. As a matter + of historic fact it has almost always been some + mere great man’s helplessness. When people + have to be created and born on purpose, generation + after generation of them, to listen to a + man, two or three thousand years of them sometimes, + on this planet, it is because the man + himself when he spoke felt the need of them—and + mentioned it. It is the man who is in + the habit of addressing his remarks to a few + continents and to several centuries who gets + them.</p> + + <p>I would not dare to say just how or when our + next great author on this earth is going to happen + to us, but I shall begin to listen hard and look + expectant the first time I hear of a man who + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>166</span>gets up on his feet somewhere in it and who + speaks as if the whole earth were listening to + him. If ever there was an earth that is getting + ready to listen, and to listen all over, it is this + one. And the first great man who speaks in it + is going to speak as if he knew it. It is a world + which has been allowed about a million years + now, to get to the point where it could be said + to begin to be conscious of being a world at all. + And I cannot believe that a world which for + the first time in its history has at last the conveniences + for listening all over, if it wants to, + is not going to produce at the same time a man + who shall have something to say to it—a man + that shall be worthy of the first single full + audience, sunset to sunset, that has ever been + thought of. It would seem as if, to say the + least, such an audience as this, gathering half + in light and half in darkness around a star, + would celebrate by having a man to match. + It would not be necessary for him to fall back, + either, one would think, upon anything that + has ever been said or thought of before. Already + even in the sight and sounds of this present + world has the verse of scripture about the next + come true—“Eye hath not seen nor ear heard.” + It is not conceivable that there shall not be + something said unspeakably and incredibly + great to the first full house the planet has + afforded.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>167</span>I have gone to the place of books. I have + seen before this all the peoples flocking past + me under the earth with their little corner-saviors—each + with his own little disc of worship + all to himself on the planet—partitioned away + from the rest for thousands of years. But now + the whole face of the earth is changed. No + longer can great men and great events be aimed + at it and glanced off on it—into single nations. + Great men, when they come now, can generally + have a world at their feet. It is not possible + that we shall not have them. The whole earth + is the wager that we are going to have them. + The bids are out—great statesmen, great actors, + great financiers, great authors—even millionaires + will gradually grow great. It cannot be helped. + And it will be strange if someone cannot + think of something to say, with the first full house + this planet has afforded.</p> + + <p>Even as it is now, let any man with a great + girth of love in him but speak once—but speak + one single round-the-world delight and nations + sit at his feet. When Rudyard Kipling is + dying with pneumonia seven seas listen to his + breathing. The nations are in galleries on the + stage of the earth now, one listening above + the other to the same play following around the + sunrise. Every one is affected by it—a kind of + soul-suction—a great pulling from the world. + People who do not want to write at all feel it—a + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>168</span>kind of huge, soft, capillary attraction apparently—to + a pen. The whole planet kindles + every man’s solitude. Continents are bellows + for the glow in him if there is any. The wireless + telegraph beckons ideas around the world. + “How does a planet applaud?” dreams the young + author. “With a faint flush of light?” One + would like to be liked by it—speak one’s little + piece to it. When one was through, one could + hear the soft hurrah through Space.</p> + + <p>I wonder sometimes that in This Presence I + ever could have thought or had times of thinking + it was a little or a lonely world to write in—to + flicker out thoughts in. When I think of what + a world it was that came to men once and of + the world that waits around me—around all of + us now—I do like to mention it.</p> + + <p>When many years ago, as a small boy, I was + allowed for the first time to open the little inside + door in the paddle-box of a great side-wheel + steamer and watched its splendid thrust on the + sea, I did not know why it was that I could + not be called away from it, or why I stood and + watched hour after hour unconscious before + it—the thunder and the foam piling up upon + my being. I have guessed now. I watch the + drive-wheel of an engine now as if I were + tracking out at last the last secret of loneliness. + I face Time and Space with it. I know I + have but to do a true deed and I am crowded + round—to help me do it. I know I have but + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>169</span>to think a true thought, but to be true and + deep enough with a book—feel a worldful for + it, put a worldful in it—and the whole planet + will look over my shoulder while I write. Thousands + of printing presses under a thousand skies + I hear truth working softly, saying over and + over, and around and around the earth, the + word that was given to me to say.</p> + + <p>Can any one believe that this strange new, + deep, beautiful, clairvoyant feeling a man has + nowadays every day, every hour, for the other + side of a star, is not going to make arts and men + and words and actions great in the world?</p> + + <p>Silently, you and I, Gentle Reader, are watching + the first great gathering-in of a world to + listen and to live. The continents are unanimous. + There has never been a quorum before. + They are getting together at last for the first + world-sized man, for the first world-sized word. + They are listening him into life. It is really + getting to be a planet now, a whole completed + articulated, furnished, lived-through, loved-through + star, from sun’s end to sun’s end. One + sees the sign on it</p> + + <div class="chapter_ending"> + <p>TO LET</p> + <p class="smaller_caps">TO ANY MAN WHO REALLY WANTS IT.</p> + </div> + + </div> + + <div id="part_4_ch_8" class="chapter"> + <p class="chapter_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>170</span>VIII</p> + <h3 class="chapter_title">THE IDEA OF LOVE AND COMRADESHIP</h3> + <div class="epigram"> + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>“Ever there comes an onward phrase to me</p> + <p>Of some transcendent music I have heard;</p> + <p>No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered,</p> + <p>No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory.</p> + <p>But a glad strain of some still symphony</p> + <p>That no proud mortal touch has ever stirred.”</p> + </div> + </div> + </div> + <p>Have you ever walked out over the hill in your + city at night, Gentle Reader—your own + city—felt the soul of it lying about you—lying + there in its gentleness and splendor and lust? + Have you never felt as you stood there that you + had some right to it, some right way down in + your being—that all this haze of light and + darkness, all the people in it, somehow really + belonged to you? We do not exactly let our + souls say it—at least out loud—but there + are times when I have been out in the street + with The Others, when I have heard them—heard + our souls, that is—all softly trooping + through us, saying it to ourselves. “O to + know—to be utterly known one moment; to + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>171</span>have, if only for one second, twenty thousand + souls for a home; to be gathered around by a city, + to be sought out and haunted by some one great + all-love, once, streets and silent houses of it!”</p> + + <p>I go up and down the pavements reaching + out into the days and nights of the men and + the women. Perhaps you have seen me, + Gentle Reader, in The Great Street, in the long, + slow shuffle with the others? And I have said + to you though I did not know it: “Did you not + call to me? Did you hear anything? I think + it was I calling to you.”</p> + + <p>I have sat at the feet of cities. I have swept + the land with my soul. I have gone about and + looked upon the face of the earth. I have + demanded of smoking villages sweeping past + and of the mountains and of the plains and of + the middle of the sea: “Where are those that + belong to me? Will I ever travel near enough, + far enough?” I have gone up and down the + world—seen the countless men and women in + it, standing on either side of their Abyss of + Circumstance, beckoning and reaching out. + I have seen men and women sleepless, or worn, + or old, casting their bread upon the waters, + grasping at sunsets or afterglows, putting their + souls like letters in bottles. Some of them seem + to be flickering their lives out like Marconi messages + into a sort of infinite, swallowing human + space.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>172</span>Always this same wild aimless sea of living. + There does not seem to be a geography for love. + My soul answered me: “Did you expect a + world to be indexed? Life is steered by a Wind. + Blossoms and cyclones and sunshine and you + and I—all blundering along together.” “Let + every seed swell for itself,” the Universe has + said, in its first fine careless rapture. God is + merely having a good time. Why should I + go up and down a universe crying through it, + “Where are those that belong to me?” I have + looked at the stars swung out at me and they + have not answered, and now when I look at + the men, I have seemed to see them, every + man in a kind of dull might, rushing, his hands + before him, hinged on emptiness. “You are + alone,” the heart hath said. “Get up and be + your own brother. The world is a great WHO + CARES?”</p> + + <p>But when, in the middle of deep, helpless + sleep, tossed on the wide waters, I wake in a + ship, feel it trembling all through out there + with my brother’s care for me, I know that + this is not true. “Around sunsets, out through + the great dark,” I find myself saying, “he has + reached over and held me. Out here on this + high hill of water, under this low, touching + sky, I sleep.”</p> + + <p>Sometimes I do not sleep. I lie awake + silently, and feel gathered around. I wonder + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>173</span>if I could be lonely if I tried. I touch the + button by my pillow. I listen to great cities + tending me. I have found all the earth paved, + or carpeted, or hung, or thrilled through with + my brother’s thoughts for me. I cannot hide + from love. He has hired oceans to do my + errands. He has made the whole human race + my house-servants. I lie in my berth for sheer + joy, thinking of the strange peoples where the + morning is, running to and fro for me, down + under the dark. Next me, the great quiet + throb of the engine—between me and infinite + space—beating comfortably. I cannot help + answering to it—this soft and mighty reaching + out where I lie.</p> + + <p>My thoughts follow along the great twin + shafts my brother holds me with. I wonder + about them. I wish to do and share with them.</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <div class="stanza"> + <p>Were I a spirit I would go</p> + <p>Where the murmuring axles of the screws</p> + <p>Along their whirling aisles</p> + <p>Break through the hold,</p> + <p>Where they lift the awful shining thews</p> + <p>Of Thought,</p> + <p>Of Trade,</p> + <p>And strike the Sea</p> + <p>Till the scar of London lies</p> + <p>Miles and miles upon its breast</p> + <p>Out in the West.</p> + </div> + </div> + + <p>As I lie and look out of my port-hole and + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>174</span>watch the starlight stepping along the sea I + let my soul go out and visit with it. The ship + I am in—a little human beckoning between two + deserts. Out through my port-hole I seem to + see other ships, ghosts of great cities—an ocean + of them, creeping through their still huge picture + of the night, with their low hoarse whistles + meeting one another, whispering to one another + under the stars.</p> + + <p>“And they are all mine,” I say, “hastening + gently.”</p> + + <p>I lie awake thinking of it. I let my whole + being float out upon the thought of it. The + bare thought of it, to me, is like having lived + a great life. It is as if I had been allowed to be + a great man a minute. I feel rested down + through to before I was born. The very stars, + after it, seem rested over my head. I have + gathered my universe about me. It is as if + I had lain all still in my soul and some + beautiful eternal sleep—a minute of it—had + come to me and visited me. All men are my + brothers. Is not the world filled with hastening + to me? What is there my brother has not done + for me? From the uttermost parts of the + morning, all things that are flow fresh and + beautiful upon my flesh. He has laid my will + on the heavens. His machines are like the + tides that do not stop. They are a part of the + vast antennæ of the earth. They have grown + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>175</span>themselves upon it. Like wind and vapor and + dust, they are a part of the furnishing of the + earth. If I am cold and seek furs Alaska is as + near as the next snowdrift. My brother has + caused it to be so. Everywhere is five cents + away. I take tea in Pekin with a spoon from + Australia and a saucer from Dresden. With + the handle of my knife from India and the blade + from Sheffield, I eat meat from Kansas. Thousands + of miles bring me spoonfuls. The taste + in my mouth, five or six continents have made + for me. The isles of the sea are on the tip of + my tongue.</p> + + <p>And this is the thing my brother means, the + thing he has done for me, solitary. I keep + saying it over to myself. I lie still and try to + take it in—to feel the touch of the hands of + his hands. Does any one say this thing he is + doing is done for money—that it is not done + for comradeship or love? Could money have + thought of it or dared it or desired it? Could + all the money in the world ever pay him for it? + This paper-ticket I give him—for this berth I + lie in—does it pay him for it? Do I think to pay + my fare to the infinite?—I—a parasite of a + great roar in a city? These seven nights in the + hollow of his hand he has held me and let me + look upon the heaped-up stillness in heaven—of + clouds. I have visited with the middle of the + sea.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>176</span>And now with a thought, have I furnished + my hot plain and smoke forever.</p> + + <p>I have not time to dream. I spell out each + night, before I sleep, some vast new far-off love, + this new daily sense of mutual service, this whole + round world to measure one’s being against. + Crowds wait on me in silence. I tip nations + with a nickel. Who would believe it? I lie + in my berth and laugh at the bigness of my heart.</p> + + <p>When I go out on the meadow at high noon + and in the great sleepy sunny silence there I + stand and watch that long imperious train go + by putting together the White Mountains and + New York, it is no longer as it was at first, a + mere train by itself to me,—a flash of parlor cars + between a great city and a sky up on Mt. + Washington. When it swings up between my + two little mountains its huge banner of steam + and smoke, it is the beckoning of The Other + Trains, the whole starful, creeping through the + Alps (that moment), stealing up the Andes, + roaring through the sun or pounding through + the dark on the under sides of the world.</p> + + <p>In the great silence on the meadow after the + train rolls by, it would be hard to be lonely + for a minute, not to stand still, not to share + in spirit around the earth a few of the big, + happy things—the far unseen peoples in the + sun, the streets, the domes and towers, the + statesmen, and poets, but always between + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>177</span>and above and beneath the streets and the + domes and the towers, and the statesmen and + poets—always the engineers,—I keep seeing them—these + men who dip up the world in their + hands, who sweep up life … long, narrow, little + towns of souls, and bowl them through the + Days and Nights.</p> + + <p>In this huge, bottomless, speechless, modern + world—one would rather be running the poems + than writing them. At night I turn in my + sleep. I hear the midnight mail go by—that same + still face before it, the great human headlight of + it. I lie in my bed wondering. And when the + thunder of the Face has died away, I am still + wondering. Out there on the roof of the world, + thundering alone, thundering past death, past + glimmering bridges, past pale rivers, folding + away villages behind him (the strange, soft, + still little villages), pounding on the switch-lights, + scooping up the stations, the fresh strips + of earth and sky…. The cities swoon + before him … swoon past him. Thundering + past his own thunder, echoes dying away … + and now out in the great plain, out in the + fields of silence, drinking up mad splendid, + little black miles…. Every now and + then he thinks back over his shoulder, thinks + back over his long roaring, yellow trail of souls. + He laughs bitterly at sleep, at the men with + tickets, at the way the men with tickets believe + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>178</span>in him. He knows (he grips his hand on the + lever) he is not infallible. Once … twice … + he might have … he almost…. Then suddenly + there is a flash ahead … he sets his + teeth, he reaches out with his soul … masters + it, he strains himself up to his infallibility again + … all those people there … fathers, mothers, + children, … sleeping on their arms full of + dreams. He feels as the minister feels, I + should think, when the bells have stopped on + a Sabbath morning, when he stands in his pulpit + alone, alone before God … alone before the + Great Silence, and the people bow their + heads.</p> + + <p>But I have found that it is not merely the + machines that one can see at a glance are + woven all through with men (like the great + trains) which make the big companions. It is + a mere matter of getting acquainted with the + machines and there is not one that is not woven + through with men, with dim faces of vanished + lives—with inventors.</p> + + <p>I have seen great wheels, in steam and in + smoke, like swinging spirits of the dead. I have + been told that the inventors were no longer with + us, that their little tired, old-fashioned bodies + were tucked in cemeteries, in the crypts of + churches, but I have seen them with mighty + new ones in the night—in the broad day, in a + nameless silence, walk the earth. Inventors may + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>179</span>not be put like engineers, in show windows in + front of their machines, but they are all wrought + into them. From the first bit of cold steel on + the cowcatcher to the little last whiff of breath + in the air-brake, they are wrought in—fibre of + soul and fibre of body. As the sun and the wind + are wrought in the trees and rivers in the mountains, + they are there. There is not a machine + anywhere, that has not its crowd of men + in it, that is not full of laughter and hope + and tears. The machines give one some idea, + after a few years of listening, of what the inventors’ + lives were like. One hears them—the + machines and the men, telling about each + other.</p> + + <p>There are days when it has been given to me + to see the machines as inventors and prophets + see them.</p> + + <p>On these days I have seen inventors handling + bits of wood and metal. I have seen them + taking up empires in their hands and putting + the future through their fingers.</p> + + <p>On these days I have heard the machines + as the voices of great peoples singing in the + streets.</p> + + <p class="thought_break">And after all, the finest and most perfect use + of machinery, I have come to think, is this one + the soul has, this awful, beautiful daily joy in + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>180</span>its presence. To have this communion with it + speaking around one, on sea and land, and in + the low boom of cities, to have all this vast + reaching out, earnest machinery of human life—sights + and sounds and symbols of it, beckoning + to one’s spirit day and night everywhere, + playing upon one the love and glory of the world—to + have—ah, well, when in the last great + moment of life I lay my universe out in order + around about me, and lie down to die, I shall + remember I have lived.</p> + + <p>This great sorrowing civilization of ours, + which I had seen before, always sorrowing at + heart but with a kind of devilish convulsive + energy in it, has come to me and lived + with me, and let me see the look of the future + in its face.</p> + + <p>And now I dare look up. For a moment—for + a moment that shall live forever—I have + seen once, I think—at least once, this great + radiant gesturing of Man around the edges of a + world. I shall not die, now, solitary. And + when my time shall come and I lie down to + do it, oh, unknown faces that shall wait with + me,—let it not be with drawn curtains nor + with shy, quiet flowers of fields about me, and + silence and darkness. Do not shut out the + great heartless-sounding, forgetting-looking roar + of life. Rather let the windows be opened. + And then with the voice of mills and of the + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>181</span>mighty street—all the din and wonder of it,—with + the sound in my ears of my big brother + outside living his great life around his little + earth, I will fall asleep.</p> + + </div> + + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>182</span></p> +</div> + +<div id="end_matter"> + <div id="birds_eye_view"> + <h2 class="end_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>183</span>BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THIS BOOK</h2> + <p><span class="pagenum blank_page"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>184</span></p> + <h3 class="end_part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>185</span>PART ONE</h3> + <p>I. The word beautiful in 1905 is no longer shut in + with its ancient rim of hills, or with a show of sunsets, + or with bouquets and doilies and songs of birds. It is + a man’s word, says The Twentieth Century. “If + a hill is beautiful. So is the locomotive that conquers + a hill.”</p> + + <p>II. The modern literary man—slow to be converted, + is already driven to his task. Living in an + age in which nine-tenths of his fellows are getting their + living out of machines, or putting their living into + them, he is not content with a definition of beauty + which shuts down under the floor of the world nine + tenths of his fellowbeings, leaves him standing by + himself with his lonely idea of beauty, where—except + by shouting or by looking down through a hatchway + he has no way of communing with his kind.</p> + + <p>III. Unless he can conquer the machines, interpret + them for the soul or the manhood of the men about + him he sees that after a little while—in the great + desert of machines, there will not be any men. + A little while after that there will not be any machines. + He has come to feel that the whole problem + of civilization turns on it—on what seems at first + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>186</span>sight an abstract or literary theory—that there is + poetry in machines. If we cannot find a great hope + or a great meaning for the machine-idea in its simplest + form, the machines of steel and flame that minister + to us, if inspiring ideas cannot be connected with a + machine simply because it is a machine, there is not + going to be anything left in modern life with which to + connect inspiring ideas. All our great spiritual values + are being operated as machines. To take the stand + that inspiring ideas and emotions can be and will be + connected with machinery is to take a stand for the + continued existence of modern religion (in all reverence) + the God-machine, for modern education, the man-machine, + for modern government, the crowd-machine, + for modern art, the machine that expresses the crowd, + and for modern society—the machine in which the + crowd lives.</p> + + <p>IV. V. The poetry in machinery is a matter of + fact. The literary men who know the men who + know the machines, the men who live with them, the + inventors, and engineers and brakemen have no doubts + about the poetry in machinery. The real problem + that stands in the way of interpreting and bringing + out the poetry in machinery, instead of being a literary + or æsthetic problem is a social one. It is in getting + people to notice that an engineer is a gentleman and a + poet.</p> + + <p>VI. The inventor is working out the passions and + the freedoms of the people, the tools of the nations.</p> + + <p>The people are already coming to look upon the inventor + under our modern conditions as the new form of + prophet. If what we call literature cannot interpret + the tools that men are daily doing their living with, + literature as a form of art, is doomed. So long as + men are more creative and godlike in engines than + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>187</span>they are in poems the world listens to engines. If + what we call the church cannot interpret machines, + the church as a form of religion loses its leadership + until it does. A church that can only see what a + few of the men born in an age, are for, can only + help a few. A religion that lives in a machine-age + and that does not see and feel the meaning of that age, + is not worthy of us. It is not even worthy of our + machines. One of the machines that we have made + could make a better religion than this.</p> + + <h3 class="end_part_number">PART TWO</h3> + <p class="end_part_title">THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES</p> + <p>I. I have heard it said that if a thing is to be called + poetic it must have great ideas in it and must successfully + express them; that the language of the machines, + considered as an expression of the ideas that are + in the machines, is irrelevant and absurd. But all + language looked at in the outside way that men have + looked at machines, is irrelevant and absurd. We + listen solemnly to the violin, the voice of an archangel + with a board tucked under his chin. Except to people + who have tried it, nothing could be more inadequate + than kissing as a form of human expression, between + two immortal infinite human beings.</p> + + <p>II. The chief characteristic of the modern machine + as well as of everything else that is strictly + modern is that it refuses to show off. The man who + is looking at a twin-screw steamer and who is not + feeling as he looks at it the facts and the ideas + that belong with it, is not seeing it. The poetry is + under water.</p> + + <p>III. I have heard it said that the modern man + <span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>188</span>does not care for poetry. It would be truer to say + that he does not care for old-fashioned poetry—the + poetry that bears on. The poetry in a Dutch windmill + flourishes and is therefore going by, to the strictly + modern man. The idle foolish look of a magnet + appeals to him more. Its language is more expressive + and penetrating. He has learned that in proportion + as a machine or anything else is expressive—in the + modern language, it hides. The more perfect or + poetic he makes his machines the more spiritual they + become. His utmost machines are electric. Electricity + is the modern man’s prophet. It sums up his + world. It has the modern man’s temperament—the + passion of being invisible and irresistible.</p> + + <p>IV. Poetry and religion consist—at bottom, in + being proud of God. Most men to-day are worshipping + God—at least in secret, not merely because + of this great Machine that He has made, running softly + above us—moonlight and starlight … but because + He has made a Machine that can make machines, a + machine that shall take more of the dust of the earth + and of the vapor of heaven and crowd it into steel + and iron and say “Go ye now,—depths of the earth, + heights of heaven—serve ye me! Stones and mists, + winds and waters and thunder—the spirit that is in + thee is my spirit. I also, even I also am God!”</p> + + <p>V. Everything has its language and the power of + feeling what a thing means, by the way it looks, is a + matter of noticing, of learning the language. The + language of the machines is there. I cannot precisely + know whether the machines are expressing their ideas + or not. I only know that when I stand before a + foundry hammering out the floors of the world, clashing + its awful cymbals against the night, I lift my soul + to it, and in some way—I know not how, while it sings + to me, I grow strong and glad.</p> + + <h3 class="end_part_number"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>189</span>PART THREE</h3> + <p class="end_part_title">THE MACHINES AS POETS</p> + <p>I. II. Machinery has poetry in it because it expresses + the soul of man—of a whole world of men.</p> + + <p>It has poetry in it because it expresses the individual + soul of the individual man who creates the Machine—the + inventor, and the man who lives with the machine—the + engineer.</p> + + <p>It has poetry in it because it expresses God. He is the + kind of God who can make men who can make machines.</p> + + <p>III. IV. Machinery has poetry in it because in + expressing the man’s soul it expresses the greatest idea + that the soul of man can have—the man’s sense of being + related to the Infinite. It has poetry in it not merely because + it makes the man think he is infinite but because + it is making the man as infinite as he thinks he is. When + I hear the machines, I hear Man saying, “God and I.”</p> + + <p>V. Machinery has poetry in it because in expressing + the infinity of man it expresses the two great immeasurable + ideas of poetry and of the imagination + and of the soul in all ages—the two forms of infinity—the + liberty and the unity of man.</p> + + <p>The substance of a beautiful thing is its Idea.</p> + + <p>A beautiful thing is beautiful in proportion as its + form reveals the nature of its substance, that is, conveys + its idea.</p> + + <p>Machinery is beautiful by reason of immeasurable + ideas consummately expressed.</p> + + <h3 class="end_part_number">PART FOUR</h3> + <p class="end_part_title">THE IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES</p> + <p>The ideas of machinery in their several phases are + sketched in chapters as follows:</p> + + <p>I. II. The idea of the incarnation. The God in the + body of the man.</p> + + <p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>190</span>III. The idea of liberty—the soul’s rescue from + environment.</p> + + <p>IV. The idea of immortality.</p> + + <p>V. The idea of God.</p> + + <p>VI. The idea of the Spirit—of the Unseen and + Intangible.</p> + + <p>VII. The practical idea of invoking great men.</p> + + <p>VIII. The religious idea of love and comradeship.</p> + + <p class="thought_break">Note.—The present volume is the first of a series + which had their beginnings in some articles in the + <i>Atlantic</i> a few years ago, answering or trying to answer + the question, “Can a machine age have a soul?” + Perhaps it is only fair to the present conception, as + it stands, to suggest that it is an overture, and that + the various phases and implications of machinery—the + general bearing of machinery in our modern life, + upon democracy, and upon the humanities and the + arts, are being considered in a series of three volumes + called:</p> + + <p>I. The Voice of the Machines.</p> + + <p>II. Machines and Millionaires.</p> + + <p>III. Machines and Crowds.</p> + + </div> + + <div id="advertisement"> + <h2 class="end_title"><span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>191</span>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</h2> + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">ABOUT AN OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCH</span>. <span class="ad_price">$1.00</span>. “I + have read it twice and enjoyed it the second time even more than the + first.”—<span class="reviewer_style_1">Oliver Wendell Holmes</span>.</p> + + <p>“I read the preface, and that one little bite out of the crust made + me as hungry as a man on a railroad. What a bright evening full of + laughter, touched every now and then with tenderness, it made for us + I do not know how to tell. Here is a book I am glad to indorse as + I would a note—right across the face and present it for payment in + any man’s library.”—<span class="reviewer_style_1">Robert J. Burdette</span>.</p> + </div> + + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">THE CHILD AND THE BOOK</span>. <span class="ad_price">$.75</span>. (<span class="ad_publisher">G. P. Putnam’s Sons</span>.) + “I must express with your connivance the joy I have had, the enthusiasm + I have felt, in gloating over every page of what I believe is + the most brilliant book of any season since Carlyle’s and Emerson’s + pens were laid aside. It is full of humor, rich in style, and eccentric + in form, and all suffused with the perfervid genius of a man who + is not merely a thinker but a force. Every sentence is tinglingly + alive….</p> + + <p>“I have been reading with wonder and laughter and with loud + cheers. It is the word of all words that needed to be spoken just now. + It makes me believe that after all we haven’t a great kindergarten + about us in authorship, but that there is virtue, race, sap in us + yet. I can conceive that the date of the publication of this book + may well be the date of the moral and intellectual renaissance for + which we have long been scanning the horizon.”—<span class="reviewer_style_2">Wm. Sloane Kennedy</span>, + in <i>Boston Transcript</i>.</p> + </div> + + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">THE LOST ART OF READING</span>. <span class="ad_price">$1.00</span>. (<span class="ad_publisher">G. P. Putnam’s + Sons</span>.) “It is a real pleasure to chronicle an intellectual treat + among the books of the day. Some of us will shrug at this volume. + Others of us having read it will keep it near us.”—<i>Life.</i></p> + + <p>“Mr. Lee is a writer of great courage, who ventures to say what + some people are a little alarmed even to think.”—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + + <p>“You get right in between the covers and live.”—<i>Denver Post.</i></p> + </div> + + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">THE SHADOW CHRIST</span>. <span class="ad_price">$1.25</span>. (<span class="ad_publisher">The Century Co.</span>) “Let + me be one of the first to recognize in this book what every man who + reads it thoughtfully will feel. Heaps of the books that have been + written about the Bible are desiccated to the last grain of their dust. + They are the desert which lies around Palestine. Now and then a + man appears who makes his way straight into the Promised Land, + by sea if necessary, and takes you with him. It is not meant to be + a full, precise treatment of the subject. It is history seen in a vision. + Theology expressed in a lyric. Criticism condensed into an epigram.”—<span class="reviewer_style_2">Dr. + Henry van Dyke</span>, in <i>The Book Buyer</i>.</p> + + <p>“The author’s name—Gerald Stanley Lee—has been hitherto + unknown to us in England, but the book he has here offered to the + world indicates that he has that in him which will soon make it + familiar.”—<i>The Christian World</i> (London).</p> + </div> + + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">MOUNT TOM</span>. <span class="emphasized">An all outdoors magazine</span>, devoted to rest + and worship, and to a little look-off on the world.</p> + + <p>Edited by Mr. <span class="emphasized">Lee</span>. Every other month. 12 copies, $1.00.</p> + </div> + + <div class="ad"> + <p><span class="ad_title">THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES</span>. <span class="ad_price">$1.25</span>. (<span class="ad_publisher">Mt. Tom Press</span>.)</p> + </div> + + <div class="ad_ending"> + <p>Any of the above mailed postpaid ordered direct from<br /> + The Mount Tom Press, Northampton, Mass.</p> + </div> + + </div> +</div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Voice of the Machines, by + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES *** + +***** This file should be named 20361-h.htm or 20361-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/3/6/20361/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Lee Spector and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> |