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diff --git a/20361.txt b/20361.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..22bed3b --- /dev/null +++ b/20361.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4433 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Voice of the Machines, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +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: ASCII + +*** 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 + + + + + +The Voice of the Machines + +An Introduction to the Twentieth Century + + +BY + + +Gerald Stanley Lee + + +The Mount Tom Press +Northampton, Massachusetts + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1906 +BY +THE MOUNT TOM PRESS + + + + +TO JENNETTE LEE + + ... "Now and then my fancy caught + A flying glimpse of a good life beyond-- + Something of ships and sunlight, streets and singing, + Troy falling, and the ages coming back, + And ages coming forward."... + + + + +Contents + + +PART I + +THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES + + I.--Machines as Seen from a Meadow + II.--As Seen through a Hatchway + III.--The Souls of Machines + IV.--Poets + V.--Gentlemen + VI.--Prophets + + +PART II + +THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES + + I.--As Good as Ours + II.--On Being Busy and Still + III.--On Not Showing Off + IV.--On Making People Proud of the World + V.--A Modest Universe + + +PART III + +THE MACHINES AS POETS + + I.--Plato and the General Electric Works + II.--Hewing away on the Heavens and the Earth + III.--The Grudge against the Infinite + IV.--Symbolism in Modern Art + V.--The Machines as Artists + VI.--The Machines as Philosophers + + +PART IV + +THE IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES + + I.--The Idea of Incarnation + II.--The Idea of Size + III.--The Idea of Liberty + IV.--The Idea of Immortality + V.--The Idea of God + VI.--The Idea of the Unseen and the Intangible + VII.--The Idea of Great Men + VIII.--The Idea of Love and Comradeship + + + + +PART ONE + +THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES + + + + +I + +MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW + + +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." + +As seen when one is looking at it as it is, and is not merely using +it. + +As seen from a meadow. + +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. + +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. + +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 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." + +The voice of man, my brother, is a new voice. + +It is the voice of the machines. + + + + +II + +AS SEEN THROUGH A HATCHWAY + + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"No inspiring emotions," says the literary definition, "ideas or +conceptions can possibly be connected with machinery--or ever will +be." + +What is to become of a world roofed in with machines for the rest of +its natural life, and of 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. + +Is it true that, in a few years more, if a man 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. + + They stay not in their hold + These stokers, + Stooping to hell + To feed a ship. + Below the ocean floors, + Before their awful doors + Bathed in flame, + I hear their human lives + Drip--drip. + + Through the lolling aisles of comrades + In and out of sleep, + Troops of faces + To and fro of happy feet, + They haunt my eyes. + Their murky faces beckon me + From the spaces of the coolness of the sea + Their fitful bodies away against the skies. + + + + +III + +SOULS OF MACHINES + + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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? + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + + + + +IV + +POETS + + +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. + +Expectancy is the creed of the twentieth century. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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? + +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 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. + +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. e._, a +great hope or great poetry--in machinery. The real problem that stands +in the way of poetry in machinery is not literary, nor aesthetic. It is +sociological. It is in getting people to notice that an engineer is a +gentleman and a poet. + + + + +V + +GENTLEMEN + + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 life of the world, and +constitutes the only literal aristocracy the world has ever had. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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 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. + +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. + +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, flying out to +the Night, until there was nothing but a dull red murmur and the +falling of smoke. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Most of us in this mortal life are allowed but our one peephole in the +universe, that we may see IT 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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 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. + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + +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 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. + + + + +VI + +PROPHETS + + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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." + +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 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. + +They will listen to what the smokestacks are saying to the people. + +They will say it better. + +In the meantime they are not listening. + +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. + + RAILROAD CROSSING + LOOK OUT FOR THE ENGINE! + + + + +PART II. + +THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES + + + + +I + +AS GOOD AS OURS + + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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? + +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. + +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 strange, happy, helpless "Twelve +thousand horse-power, sir!" upon his lips. + +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. + + The engines breathe. + No sound but cinders on the sails + And the ghostly heave, + The voice the wind makes in the mast-- + And dainty gales + And fluffs of mist and smoking stars + Floating past-- + From night-lit funnels. + + In the wild of the heart of God I stand. + Time and Space + Wheel past my face. + Forever. Everywhere. + I alone. + Beyond the Here and There + Now and Then + Of men, + Winds from the unknown + Round me blow + Blow to the unknown again. + + Out in its solitude I hear the prow + Beyond the silence-crowded decks + Laughing and shouting + At Night, + Lashing the heads and necks + Of the lifted seas, + That in their flight + Urge onward + And rise and sweep and leap and sink + To the very brink + Of Heaven. + + Timber and steel and smoke + And Sleep + Thousand-souled + A quiver, + A deadened thunder, + A vague and countless creep + Through the hold, + The weird and dusky chariot lunges on + Through Fate. + From the lookout watch of my soul's eyes + Above the houses of the deep + Their shadowy haunches fall and rise + --O'er the glimmer-gabled roofs + The flying of their hoofs, + Through the wonder and the dark + Where skies and waters meet + The shimmer of manes and knees + Dust of seas... + The sound of breathing, urge, confusion + And the beat, the starlight beat + Soft and far and stealthy-fleet + Of the dim unnumbered trampling of their feet. + + + + +II + +ON BEING BUSY AND STILL + + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + + + + +III + +ON NOT SHOWING OFF + + +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. + +To be modern is to be suggestive and symbolic, to stand for more than +one says or looks--the 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +Nothing could be more impressive than the original substantial R---- +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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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 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. + +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. + +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 +ELECTRICITY--the archangel of matter. + + + + +IV + +ON MAKING PEOPLE PROUD OF THE WORLD + + +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. + +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 almost +daily habits of being proud of the world. + +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. + +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 ---- 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. ---- 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. + +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 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. + +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. 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. + +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. + +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 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!" + + + + +V + +A MODEST UNIVERSE + + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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, is impressive to a man, and a pill-box full of +dynamite, with a spark creeping toward it, is not. + +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 + + A pill-box by the river's brim + A simple pill-box was to him + And nothing more. + +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. + +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 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 IT. Is it not THERE? Is it not +HERE--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. + +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 machines striving in sleep, might lifts itself out upon me. +I rest. + +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. + + + + +PART THREE + +THE MACHINES AS POETS + + + + +I + +PLATO AND THE GENERAL ELECTRIC WORKS + + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +"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 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." + +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. + +But I have seen enough. + +I have seen engineers go by, pounding on this planet, making it small +enough, welding the nations together before my eyes. + +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. + +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. + + + + +II + +HEWING AWAY ON THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH + + +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. + +1. Machinery has poetry in it because it is an expression of the soul. + +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. + +3. It expresses God, if only that He is a God who can make men who can +thus express their 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 +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. + +"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?" + +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 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. + +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 IT, 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 to say that it is a recent invention for +being infinite. + +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. + +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. + +No one has wanted to be infinite before. Poetry in the ancient world +was largely engaged in protecting people from the Infinite. They 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +III + +THE GRUDGE AGAINST THE INFINITE + + +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, 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. 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. + + + + +IV + +SYMBOLISM IN MODERN ART + + "_So I drop downward from the wonderment + Of timelessness and space, in which were blent + The wind, the sunshine and the wanderings + Of all the planets--to the little things + That are my grass and flowers, and am content._" + + +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 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? + +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? + +The same spiritual trait, a kind of gentle persistent grudge against +the infinite, shows 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, THE THINGS THAT MAN CANNOT TOUCH. 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 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. + +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 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. + +The pine may be said to be the symbol of the beauty in machinery, +because it is beautiful the 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. + +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. + +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 other +men by playing upon the infinite in their own lives, is a typical +modern masterpiece. + +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. + + + + +V + +THE MACHINES AS ARTISTS + + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 a kind of Zeit-geist or +passing of the spirit of the age. + +When I looked again it was old 992 from the roundhouse escorting +Number Eight to Springfield. + + + + +VI + +THE MACHINES AS PHILOSOPHERS + + +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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +1. The substance of a beautiful thing is its Idea. + +2. A beautiful thing is beautiful in proportion as its form reveals +the nature of its substance, that is, conveys its idea. + +3. Machinery is beautiful by reason of immeasurable ideas consummately +expressed. + +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. + +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 +being wrought out before our eyes upon the face of the earth. + +6. It is only from the point of view of a nightingale or a sonnet that +the aesthetic 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. + +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: + + The idea of the incarnation--the god in the body of the man. + The idea of liberty--the soul's rescue from others. + The idea of unity--the soul's rescue from its mere self. + The idea of the Spirit--the Unseen and Intangible. + The idea of immortality. + The cosmic idea of God. + The practical idea of invoking great men. + The religious idea of love and comradeship. + +And nearly every other idea that makes of itself a song or a prayer in +the human spirit. + + + + +PART FOUR + +IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES + + + + +I + +THE IDEA OF INCARNATION + + "_I sought myself through earth and fire and seas, + + And found it not--but many things beside; + Behemoth old, Leviathans that ride. + And protoplasm, and jellies of the tide. + + Then wandering upward through the solid earth + With its dim sounds, potential rage and mirth, + I faced the dim Forefather of my birth, + + And thus addressed Him: 'All of you that lie + Safe in the dust or ride along the sky-- + Lo, these and these and these! But where am I?_'" + + +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 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. + +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. + +Looked at superficially, or from the point of 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. + +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, 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, 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. + +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. 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 +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. + +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!" + +Has the twentieth century, I have wondered, a man in it who shall feel +Himself? + +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. + + Between the seas and skies + The Shuttle flies + Seven sunsets long, tropic-deep, + Thousand-sailed, + Half in waking, half in sleep. + + Glistening calms and shouting gales + Water-gold and green, + And many a heavenly-minded blue + It thrusts and shudders through, + Past my starlight, + Past the glow of suns I know, + Weaving fates, + Loves and hates + In the Sea-- + The stately Shuttle + To and fro, + Mast by mast, + Through the farthest bounds of moons and noons. + Flights of Days and Nights + Flies fast. + +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. + +If this is not poetry, it is because it is too great a vision. And yet +there are times I am 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?" + +The trains like spirits flock to him. + +There are days when I can read a time-table. When I put it back in my +pocket it sings. + +In the time-table I carry in my pocket I unfold the earth. + +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. + + + + +II + +THE IDEA OF SIZE + + +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. + +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 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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +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 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." + +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 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 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. + + + + +III + +THE IDEA OF LIBERTY + + +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 history was safe--that there was going to be enough of it. + +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. + +I had a good deal the same experience with Mount Pelee last summer. I +resented being cooped up helplessly, on a planet that leaked. + +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 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 Pelee 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 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." + +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. + +I felt chilled through for a long time after Mount Pelee 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, 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +It was nothing new. The planet had always been a little queer. It was +when it commenced. 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. + +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. + +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 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 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. + +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 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." + +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 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. + +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 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. + +All this may be a little mixing perhaps. It is always difficult to +tell the difference between 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. + +In the meantime it does seem to me that a comparatively simple affair +like this one single planet, need not worry us much. + +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, 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! + + + + +IV + +THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY + + +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. + +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 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, 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. + +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 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." + +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 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. + +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. + + A thousand breaths we lie + Shrouded limbs and faces + Horizontal + Packed in cases + In our named and numbered places, + Catalogued for sleep, + Trembling through the Godlight + Below, above, + Deep to Deep. + +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. + +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 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? + +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. + + +II + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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? + + "Oh, tenderly the haughty day + Fills his blue urn with fire; + One morn is in the mighty heaven + And one in my desire." + +I play with the Seasons, with all the weathers on earth. I can +telegraph for them. I go to 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. + + + + +V + +THE IDEA OF GOD + + +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 H---- 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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +And what is true of my literal body--of the joy of my hands and my +feet, is still more true of the hands of my hands. + +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. + + Let him sing to me + Who sees the watching of the stars above the day, + Who hears the singing of the sunrise + On its way + Through all the night. + Who outfaces skies, outsings the storms, + Whose soul has roamed + Infinite-homed + Through tents of Space, + His hand in the dim Great Hand that forms + All wonder. + + Let him sing to me + Who is The Sky Voice, The Thunder Lover + Who hears above the wind's fast-flying shrouds + The drifted darkness, the heavenly strife, + The singing on the sunny sides of all the clouds, + Of His Own Life. + + + + +VI + +THE IDEA OF THE UNSEEN AND INTANGIBLE + + +_AN ODE TO THE UNSEEN_ + + Poets of flowers, singers of nooks in Space, + Petal-mongers, embroiderers of words + In the music-haunted houses of the birds, + Singers with the thrushes and pewees + In the glimmer-lighted roofs + Of the trees-- + Unhand my soul! + Buds with singing in their hearts, + Birds with blooms upon their wings, + All the wandering whispers of delight, + The near familiar things; + Voice of pine trees, winds of daisies, + Sounds of going in the grain + Shall not bind me to thy singing + When the sky with God is ringing + For the Joy of the Rain. + Sea and star and hill and thunder, + Dawn and sunset, noon and night, + All the vast processional of the wonder + Where the worlds are, + Where my soul is, + Where the shining tracks are + For the spirit's flight-- + Lift thine eyes to these + From the haunts of dewdrops, + Hollows of the flowers, + Caves of bees + That sing like thee, + Only in their bowers; + From the stately growing cities + Of the little blowing leaves, + To the infinite windless eaves + Of the stars; + From the dainty music of the ground, + The dim innumerable sound + Of the Mighty Sun + Creeping in the grass, + Softest stir of His feet + (Where they go + Far and slow + On their immemorial beat + Of buds and seeds + And all the gentle and holy needs + Of flowers), + To the old eternal round + Of the Going of His Might, + Above the confines of the dark, + Odors and winds and showers, + Day and night, + Above the dream of death and birth + Flickering East and West, + Boundaries of a Shadow of an Earth-- + Where He wheels + And soars + And plays + In illimitable light, + Sends the singing stars upon their ways + And on each and every world + When The Little Shadow for its Little Sleep + Is furled-- + Pours the Days. + + * * * * * + +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. + + In my deepest dream + I heard the Song + Running in my sleep + Through the lowest caves of Being + Down below + Where no sound is, sun is, + Hearing, seeing + That men know. + +There was something about it, about that sense of the mile of cars +moving, that made it all seem very old. + + +_An Ode to the Lightning._ + + Before the first new dust of dream God took + For making man and hope and love and graves + Had kindled to its fate. Before the floods + Had folded round the hills. Before the rainbow + Born of cloud had taught the sky its tints, + The Lightning Minstrel was. The cry of Vague + To Vague. The Chaos-voice that rolled and crept + From out the pale bewildered wonder-stuff + That wove the worlds, + Before the Hand had stirred that touched them, + While still, hinged on nothing, + Dim and shapeless Things + And clouds with groping sleep upon their wings + Floated and waited. + Before the winds had breathed the breath of life + Or blown from wastes of Space + To Earth's creating place, + The souls of seeds + And ghosts of old dead stars, + The Lightning Spirit willed + Their feet with wonder should be thrilled. + --Primal fire of all desire + That leaps from men to men, + Brother of Suns + And all the Glorious Ones + That circle skies, + He flashed to these + The night that brought the birth, + The vision of the place + And raised his awful face + To all their glittering crowds, + And cried from where It lay + --A tiny ball of fire and clay + In swaddling clothes of clouds, + "Behold the Earth!" + + * * * * * + * * * * * + + Oh heavenly feet of The Hot Cloud! Bringer + Of the garnered airs. Herald of the shining rains! + Looser of the locked and lusty winds from their misty caves. + Opener of the thousand thousand-gloried doors twixt heaven + And heaven and Heaven's heaven. Oh thou whose play + Men make to do their work (_Why do their work?_) + --And call from holidays of space, sojourns + Of suns and moons, and lock to earth + (_Why lock to earth?_) + + * * * * * + + That the Dead Face may flash across the seas + The cry of the new-born babe be heard around + A world. Ah me! and the click of lust + And the madness and the gladness and the ache + Of Dust, Dust! + + +AN ODE TO THE TELEGRAPH WIRES. + +THE SONG THE WORLD SANG LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE + + The mortal wires of the heart of the earth + I sing, melted and fused by men, + That the immortal fires of their souls should fling + To eaves of heaven and caves of sea, + And God Himself, and farthest hills and dimmest bounds of sense + The flame of the Creature's ken, + The flame of the glow of the face of God + Upon the face of men. + + Wind-singing wires + Along their thousand airy aisles, + Feet of birds and songs of leaves, + Glimmer of stars and dewy eves. + Sea-singing wires + Along their thousand slimy miles, + Shadowy deeps, + Unsunned steeps, + Beating in their awful caves + To mouthing fish and bones + And weeds unfurled + Deserts of waves + The heart-beat of this upper world. + Infinite blue, infinite green, + Infinite glory of the ear + Ticking its passions through + Infinite fear, + Ooze of storm, sodden and slanting wrecks + The forever untrodden decks + Of Death, + Ever the seething wires + On the floors + Of the world, + Below the last + Locked fast + Water-darkened doors + Of the sun, + Lighting the awful signal fires + Of our speechless vast desires + On the mountains and the hills + Of the sea + Till the sandy-buried heights + And the sullen sunken vales + And fire-defying barrens of the deep + The hearth of souls shall be + Beacons of Thought, + And from the lurk of the shark + To the sunrise-lighted eerie of the lark + And where the farthest cloud-sail fills + Shall be felt the throbbing and the sobbing and the hoping + The might and mad delight, + The hell-and-heaven groping + Of our little human wills. + + +AN ODE TO THE WIRELESS + +THE PRAYER OF MAN THROUGH ALL THE YEARS IN WHICH THE SKY-TELEGRAPH +WOULD NOT WORK + + Roofed in with fears, + Beneath its little strip of sky + That is blown about + In and out + Across my wavering strip of years-- + Who am I + Whose singing scarce doth reach + The cloud-climbed hills, + To take upon my lips the speech + Of those whose voices Heaven fills + With splendor? + + And yet-- + I cannot quite forget + That in the underdawn of dreams + I have felt the faint surmise + Shining through the starry deep of my sleep + That I with God went singing once + Up and down with suns and storms + Through the phantom-pillared forms + And stately-silent naves + And thunder-dreaming caves + Of Heaven. + + Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh + Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh, + Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust + Hast thrust + Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, + Where are the deeds that needs must be, + The dreams, the high delights, + That I once more may hear my voice + From cloudy door to door rejoice-- + May stretch the boundaries of love + Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears + To the faint-remembered glory of those years-- + May lift my soul + And reach this Heaven of thine + With mine? + Where are the gleams? + Thou shalt tell me, + Shalt compel me. + The sometime glory shall return + I know. + + The day shall be + When by wondering I shall learn + With vapor-fingers to discern + The music-hidden keys of skies-- + Shall touch like thee + Until they answer me + The chords of the silent air + And strike the wild and slumber-music out + Dreaming there. + Above the hills of singing that I know + On the trackless, soundless path + That wonder hath + I shall go, + Beyond the street-cry of the poet, + The hurdy-gurdy singing + Of the throngs, + To the Throne of Silence, + Where the Doors + That guard the farthest faintest shores + Of Day + Swing their bars, + And shut the songs of heaven in + From all our dreaming-doing din, + Behind the stars. + + There, at last, + The climbing and the singing passed, + And the cry, + My hushed and listening soul shall lie + At the feet of the place + Where the Singer sings + Who Hides His Face. + + + + +VII + +THE IDEA OF GREAT MEN + + "_I had a vision under a green hedge + A hedge of hips and haws--Men yet shall hear + Archangels rolling over the high mountains + Old Satan's empty skull._" + + +As it looks from MOUNT TOM, casting a general glance around, the Earth +has about been put into shape, now, to do things. + +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. + +It is true that art and literature do not have, at first glance, a +prosperous look in a machine 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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? + +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 + + TO LET + TO ANY MAN WHO REALLY WANTS IT. + + + + +VIII + +THE IDEA OF LOVE AND COMRADESHIP + + "_Ever there comes an onward phrase to me + Of some transcendent music I have heard; + No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered, + No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory. + But a glad strain of some still symphony + That no proud mortal touch has ever stirred._" + + +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 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!" + +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." + +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. + +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?" + +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." + +Sometimes I do not sleep. I lie awake silently, and feel gathered +around. I wonder 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. + +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. + + Were I a spirit I would go + Where the murmuring axles of the screws + Along their whirling aisles + Break through the hold, + Where they lift the awful shining thews + Of Thought, + Of Trade, + And strike the Sea + Till the scar of London lies + Miles and miles upon its breast + Out in the West. + +As I lie and look out of my port-hole and 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. + +"And they are all mine," I say, "hastening gently." + +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 antennae of the earth. +They have grown 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. + +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. + +And now with a thought, have I furnished my hot plain and smoke +forever. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +There are days when it has been given to me to see the machines as +inventors and prophets see them. + +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. + +On these days I have heard the machines as the voices of great peoples +singing in the streets. + + * * * * * + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + + + + +BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THIS BOOK + + +PART ONE + +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." + +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. + +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 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. + +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 aesthetic problem is a social one. It is in getting +people to notice that an engineer is a gentleman and a poet. + +VI. The inventor is working out the passions and the freedoms of the +people, the tools of the nations. + +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 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. + + +PART TWO + +THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES + +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. + +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. + +III. I have heard it said that the modern man 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. + +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!" + +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. + + +PART THREE + +THE MACHINES AS POETS + +I. II. Machinery has poetry in it because it expresses the soul of +man--of a whole world of men. + +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. + +It has poetry in it because it expresses God. He is the kind of God +who can make men who can make machines. + +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." + +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. + +The substance of a beautiful thing is its Idea. + +A beautiful thing is beautiful in proportion as its form reveals the +nature of its substance, that is, conveys its idea. + +Machinery is beautiful by reason of immeasurable ideas consummately +expressed. + + +PART FOUR + +THE IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES + +The ideas of machinery in their several phases are sketched in +chapters as follows: + +I. II. The idea of the incarnation. The God in the body of the man. + +III. The idea of liberty--the soul's rescue from environment. + +IV. The idea of immortality. + +V. The idea of God. + +VI. The idea of the Spirit--of the Unseen and Intangible. + +VII. The practical idea of invoking great men. + +VIII. The religious idea of love and comradeship. + + * * * * * + +Note.--The present volume is the first of a series which had their +beginnings in some articles in the _Atlantic_ 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: + +I. The Voice of the Machines. + +II. Machines and Millionaires. + +III. Machines and Crowds. + + + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + +ABOUT AN OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. _$1.00._ "I have read it twice and +enjoyed it the second time even more than the first."--_Oliver Wendell +Holmes._ + +"I read the preface, and that one little bite out of the crust made me +as hungry as a man on a railroad. What a bright evening full of +laughter, touched every now and then with tenderness, it made for us I +do not know how to tell. Here is a book I am glad to indorse as I +would a note--right across the face and present it for payment in any +man's library."--_Robert J. Burdette._ + + +THE CHILD AND THE BOOK. _$.75._ (_G. P. Putnam's Sons._) "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.... + +"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."--WM. SLOANE KENNEDY, in _Boston +Transcript_. + + +THE LOST ART OF READING. _$1.00._ (_G. P. Putnam's Sons._) "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."--_Life_. + +"Mr. Lee is a writer of great courage, who ventures to say what some +people are a little alarmed even to think."--_Springfield Republican_. + +"You get right in between the covers and live."--_Denver Post_. + + +THE SHADOW CHRIST. _$1.25._ (_The Century Co._) "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."--DR. HENRY VAN DYKE, in _The Book Buyer_. + +"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."--_The +Christian World_ (London). + + +MOUNT TOM. AN ALL OUTDOORS MAGAZINE, devoted to rest and worship, and +to a little look-off on the world. + +Edited by Mr. LEE. Every other month. 12 copies, $1.00. + + +THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES. _$1.25._ (_Mt. Tom Press._) + + + Any of the above mailed postpaid ordered direct from + The Mount Tom Press, Northampton, Mass. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Voice of the Machines, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES *** + +***** This file should be named 20361.txt or 20361.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. 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