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Title: Hephæstus; or, The Soul of the Machine
Author: Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe
Release date: March 17, 2024 [eBook #73186]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1925
Credits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEPHÆSTUS; OR, THE SOUL OF THE MACHINE ***
HEPHÆSTUS
HEPHÆSTUS
OR
The Soul of the Machine
BY
E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE
_Author of “Quo Vadimus,” etc._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1925
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
The purpose of this little book is to show that one, at least, of
the gods of Hellas has survived the flood which swept away the most
entertaining company of gods and goddesses ever created by man’s
imagination. As I propose to set him in the august place vacated by the
death of Zeus, a few biographical details may not be out of place.
Hephæstus was the son of Hera (Juno), but not of Zeus (Jupiter). How
his mother put him into the world is not precisely known. Neither Zeus
nor any other male god had anything to do with it. Yet it would be
inappropriate in the case of such a confirmed matron as Hera to speak
of parthenogenesis. Some extraordinary event had to take place before
the great home-goddess could be driven to spite her lord and master
by producing a son without his co-operation. And such an event had
indeed occurred, for Zeus had suddenly reverted to one of the oldest
forms of propagation known to biology, _viz._, propagation by budding.
A fully-armed young goddess, severe of countenance and lithe of limb,
had sprung forth from his head, thenceforth and for ever to lead and
dominate the world of thought. It was up to Hera to match Pallas Athene
by some equally important contribution to the evolution of gods, and
so by some mysterious process, into which Greek historians did not care
to pry, she produced Hephæstus, whom the Romans called Vulcan, now the
only surviving representative of that lively and enterprising clan
which once ruled the world from the summit of Mount Olympus.
Like many another product of inspiration, Hephæstus was at first
regarded as a failure. He was undersized and weak-chested, and Hera
had to suffer much from the gibes of her peers and peeresses. So
one day she dropped him down the slope of the mountain and he fell
into the sea. He was picked up by two of those charming and motherly
sea-goddesses which at that time abounded in sea-water, and was
brought up in a grotto under the ocean. In return for their kindnesses
he made them pretty ornaments of coral and mother-of-pearl.
At the age of ten, or thereabouts, he set out to find his mother. It
was some time before Hera recognized in the lame boy, with the spinal
curvature and the swarthy but pleasant face, the child she had so
mercilessly cast off. But a spark of mother-instinct revived under the
flame of the child’s filial devotion, and they soon became lasting
friends and allies.
Hephæstus, naturally, owed no allegiance to Zeus, and in the frequent
marital disputes between him and Hera he invariably took his mother’s
part, and so successfully that the redoubtable Father of the Gods
took him by his lame leg and flung him into space. He fell for a whole
day[1] and eventually alighted, like a meteorite, on the island of
Lemnos, where he was worshipped as many a meteorite has been worshipped
before and since. He put up with this for a while, but the blood of the
Olympians asserted itself, and he painfully climbed home once more.
This time he succeeded in planting his unequal feet firmly on his
native rock, and he soon became a favourite among his divine relations.
He undertook the reconstruction of the Olympian dwellings, and for this
purpose established a wonderful workshop with a huge anvil and twenty
bellows, all of which would work at his mere behest. The workshop was
made of fire-proof materials, and shone “like a star in the night.”
[1] This must be a mistake, as it would put the summit of Olympus
somewhere beyond the orbit of the moon.
He solved the housing question by building a separate palace for
each of the gods and goddesses, replete with all the comforts and
refinements of civilization. Nor did his amiability end there.
Sometimes, at their daily assemblies, he would give Ganymede a day off
and would himself hand round the nectar, producing roars of laughter
by the contrast between his hobbling gait and the deportment of the
graceful young cup-bearer.
He became so popular that at last he was able to marry Aphrodite
herself, the goddess of Love and Beauty, whom the Romans called Venus,
and who was born of the foam of the sea somewhere off Cyprus. But this
union of Beauty and the Beast was far from being a happy one. Venus was
not satisfied with a “lame mechanic” as she called him, and hankered
after the dashing Ares, alias Mars, the god of war. Having been warned
by Helios, the sun-god, of the progress of the intrigue――after it had
already reached its climax――Hephæstus lay in wait for the guilty pair
with an invisible net, and having caught them, dragged them before the
other gods amid Homeric laughter produced by their struggles in the
invisible meshes. And when a daughter was born, whom they miscalled
Harmonia, Hephæstus had his revenge by presenting her with a necklace
which brought disaster to her and all its later possessors until it
was finally laid to rest in the temple of Athene.
Meanwhile, the fame of his works spread far and wide. King Aetes
of Colchis ordered the construction of two bronze bulls capable of
breathing fire through their nostrils, and when Achilles, the Greek
champion before Troy, decided to kill Hector and avenge his friend
Patroclus, he went to Hephæstus with an introduction from Thetis, the
sea-goddess, and prevailed upon him to make him a marvellous shield on
which all heaven and earth were figured in bronze, and which was quite
impervious to mortal spear and battle-axe.
And so he dwelt and worked on Olympus for three thousand years or so,
establishing branch works on Lipari and in Sicily which kept working
at full blast until Paul of Tarsus came with his claim to have found
the Unknown God who was to establish a new Roman dominion to take the
place of the mighty Empire of the Cæsars, and was incidentally to sweep
away the gods of Rome and Greece alike and establish the worship of a
tripartite God who never smiled.
So the light-hearted company of Mount Olympus died, all but Hephæstus,
who hobbled through many lands seeking a place where he might work and
set his bellows blowing once more. For centuries he wandered, despised
and jeered at by monks, hermits, and anchorites. But his courage never
failed him. It survived the desolation of the Olympian palaces as it
had survived his two falls from the summit.
And now he has come back into his own, and his power is spreading like
a conflagration. The God of Fire is the supreme master of the earth.
His furnaces are roaring. He has dispelled the clouds of Asiatic
mysticism which obscured his native mountain. He has girdled the world
with hoops of steel. He has found strength
“To break this sorry scheme of things entire,
And mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
And his victorious progress is only beginning to take effect. How it
has come about, and what will be the eventual result of his domination
of our planet, it is the purpose of what follows to elucidate.
HEPHÆSTUS
I
Ethnologists believe that the metamorphosis from beast-like
savage to cultured civilian may be proximately explained as the
result of accumulated changes that found their initial impulses
in a half-a-dozen or so of practical inventions.
An Irish poet, disconsolately walking along Fleet Street one day,
bethought himself of a small island in an Irish lake, where he could
escape from the noise and bustle of the London streets. He wrote a
lovely poem embodying that thought, a poem expressing the longing of
every sensitive soul to retire within itself for a time and reconstruct
its world from within instead of having it impressed from without.
Needless to say, he did not content himself with planting nine
beans in a row, as he had longed to do in his fit of depression. On
the contrary. He became an Irish statesman and Senator. He dwelt
in surroundings far removed from the Stone Age. The very chair on
which he sat down to write owed its existence to many factories and
mechanical processes. Its wood was derived from planks cut in the
saw mills. Its French polish, although put on by hand, was made of
constituents――shellac, methylated spirit, whitening and what not――drawn
from many sources, each involving a number of ingenious inventions.
The coal which made his fire had been brought across the sea by a
steamer――a miracle of complicated mechanism――and the shovel with which
he put it on had been mined in Belgium, smelted in Germany, rolled in
Sheffield, and shaped and finished in Birmingham.
Not that “Inishfree” was but an idle dream. There are many such
islands in Ireland, peopled by men and women and children, living in
one-roomed mud hovels on potatoes and stewed tea, infested with vermin
and ravaged by tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, people who,
if they cannot emigrate, suffer their fate with a stolid and pathetic
resignation relieved by the hope of heavenly compensation hereafter.
Such is Inishfree, stripped of its glamour and shown in its naked
reality.
Savagery does not mean simplicity but complexity, not peace but
constant dread, not health but hopeless disease and premature death.
The South American Indian suffers acutely from constipation, which is
about the last disease we should expect him to suffer from. The negro
in his native Africa is often horribly deformed through neglect at
birth, neglected injuries, or the ravages of insect pests.
It has taken mankind ten thousand years to emerge from savagery into
barbarism, and from barbarism into civilization. Nor is the process
yet completed. The mass of mankind is still grossly ignorant. But the
leaven of knowledge is steadily working and pervading the mass, and the
rate of progress is constantly rising.
Let us trace this wonderful process of civilization to its origins and
probe its essential nature.
Starting somewhere in the tropics as a diminutive “sport” allied to
the arboreal ape, man learned to use tools and weapons. This was the
first step taken towards the conquest of the animal world, his natural
enemies.
We do not know how many ages elapsed before the rough stone hammer
evolved into the axe of polished flint. In any case, the rough stone,
even if only used for throwing at his enemy or killing his prey, was an
essentially new departure in evolution, and sounded the keynote to all
that followed down to our own times.
Tools and weapons had been evolved by other animals, but they were
always organically connected with their bodies. The tiger’s claws and
teeth, the tusks of the elephant and the wild boar, the beak of the
eagle were all formidable weapons and useful tools, but they could
neither be detached, nor replaced, nor exchanged for other tools more
suitable to the occasion. Those “natural” tools and weapons had all
been produced by “evolution,” in other words, by a mysterious agency
which some call God, some Adaptation, and some the Urge of Life.
Who was that audacious man who first took upon himself the divine
privilege of making tools and weapons for himself, instead of waiting
for “nature” to provide them for him?
Perhaps he was a puny boy, lame from birth and unable to escape from
the boar who was pursuing him. In the extremity of his terror he took
up a heavy stone from the ground and flung it at the boar with all his
might. The boar, we may well imagine, was dazed and probably terrified
by this unusual method of defence, and slunk away from his feeble but
resourceful antagonist. The story of that deliverance may, for all we
know, have been sung for many generations in the tribe, and who knows
but that the boy grew up into a great red-haired man, as great an adept
at stone-throwing as the street-urchins in Belfast, and formed the
prototype of the God Thor, whose hammer, when thrown, returned to his
hand of its own accord.
But the essential step was taken. The lad had no teeth or claws which
could match the solid tusks wielded by his mighty antagonist. So he
“invented” a new weapon. He did not grow it in his own organism, as
the squid grows its ink, to be used on one occasion and then gradually
renewed. He took a piece of the outside world and made it temporarily
a part of his person, a part which could be detached and resumed at a
moment’s notice, a temporary attachment or extension of his body which
required no blood-vessels to keep it in repair and which, if broken or
injured, would inflict no pain upon himself.
This great innovation may have been aided by some analogies in the
animal world. A bird had to collect twigs and leaves in order to build
a nest, and had thus to put a portion of the “outside world” to its own
uses. Besides, the very process of eating involved the apprehension of
outside objects, an apprehension which, in the case of the lowest form
of animal life, is to this day accomplished by pouring its jelly-like
body round the object to be consumed.
But the next invention, the discovery of the use of fire, was a
departure without a parallel to anything in the kingdoms of Nature.
It placed mankind by a single act in a position of god-like authority
over the living world. It is not surprising that the discovery of fire
is surrounded by countless legends. In Greek mythology the first use
of fire is attributed to Prometheus, the Fore-Thinker, the man who
thinks ahead. He stole it from the heavens, and was punished by Zeus
with terrible torment for having dared to endow mankind with a divine
privilege.
How great the privilege was we cannot even yet realize. For the uses
of fire are by no means exhausted, and are multiplying from day to
day. But the essential element of the change was that something came
into the hands of man which did not exist in “Nature” at all, not, at
least, in a manner ordinarily accessible to organic being. It was quite
“unnatural” to use fire. Fire represented a state in which no organism
could survive, in which all its functions were ruthlessly stopped, and
its living tissues destroyed. No animal except man has ever attained to
the use of fire. Its use represents the transcendence of man from the
ordinary scheme of Nature and his ascent into a sort of supernatural,
or at least super-organic realm.
From this step there has been no retreat, and there can be no retreat
until the sun itself grows cold. Whatever our “back-to-Nature” cranks
may say, mankind cannot repudiate and renounce its most precious
acquisition and all that it involves in the present and the future. We
may dislike the smoke of blast-furnaces, but the remedy is not to do
away with them, but to stop their smoking. The bellows of Hephæstus
are blowing and his fires are burning. The age of machinery, begun in
far-off Palæolithic days, but only established within the last hundred
years or so, has now gripped us in a scheme from which none may escape.
Taken in its narrower sense, the word “machine” means a contrivance
for increasing the force we can bring to bear upon objects until it
exceeds the limits imposed upon the tension of our muscles. As most of
the 400 voluntary muscles of the human body are attached to the bones
in a manner which diminishes the force exerted below the actual tension
of the muscles, the adoption of machinery constitutes a reversal of the
“natural” use of the system of levers which we call our skeleton. The
Lever, the Inclined Plane, the Wedge, the Pulley, the Wheel and Axle,
and the Screw, are all contrivances for slowing down the rate of work
until the force required to perform it comes within the compass of
our muscles. Our bones, on the other hand, are mostly levers “of the
third order,” in which the force is applied between the fulcrum and the
object to be moved. Thus it happens that in order to lift a weight of
one pound, our muscles are strained by a force which may amount to as
much as six pounds.
We are hardly justified in ascribing this uneconomic arrangement to the
“stupidity” of Nature. Any other arrangement, such as the use of levers
of the “second order,” would have involved a much bulkier and clumsier
build of the muscular system. Nor can we conceive of the adoption by
man of the Six Machines as a deliberate imitation of Nature, or an
improvement upon observed natural processes.
The Six Machines are obviously the crude results of long-continued
experience, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century
that their real significance in the system of mechanics was recognized.
The real importance of these contrivances lies in the fact that they
increase the power of the human body without any further evolution of
the human organism. The adoption of mechanism was a turning point in
evolution, and an event the significance of which can only be classed
with such far-reaching innovations as the birth of life itself or that
adoption of locomotion as an aid to nutrition which gave rise to the
animal kingdom.
The most widely useful of the Six Machines was undoubtedly the Wedge.
Its use was usually accompanied by that of the projected stone. The
latter, after being swung by muscular force, was a reservoir of
energy, which is the power of performing work. If brought to rest
within a shorter distance than the curve of the swing, it required a
correspondingly greater force to stop it. And that force could be still
further increased by applying it to the end of a wedge whose sides
bore upon the object to be split. The combination of mass and wedge is
represented by the spear, the arrow, and the sword, while the hammer
and the club acted as crushers rather than cutters.
Observe, then, this puny but formidable creature emerging from his
tropical forest. In his hand he carried the means of annihilating that
continuity of the organism which is essential to its existence. He was
able to drive a powerful and irresistible wedge into the body of his
antagonist and thus end the co-ordination of its natural functions. It
was thus that, later in history, the Macedonian phalanx split up the
armies of the Persian kings. By a different but essentially similar
process the 15-inch naval gun drives a wedge clean through the armour
of its opponent, in the shape of a shell which does not explode until
it is right inside the enemy ship.
Man’s war of conquest against the animal world had begun. He brought to
them a death more sudden than had existed up to his time. For he had
the power of driving his wedge into the most vulnerable and essential
part of his enemy’s body. A clean cut inflicted at the appropriate
point would mean his final end. Man was not long in discovering
his enemy’s weaknesses. And when his enemy was a human one, he made
assurance complete by bringing home his head.[2]
[2] It is curious in this connection that among the legends of
the Saints there is no record of a decapitated person being
brought back to life. The angels or departed saints who came
to heal the torn breasts of martyred Christian virgins were
unable to put heads back on bleeding trunks, even though the
tongues in some of those heads were empowered to testify for
some time after they would, in the ordinary course of things,
have become silent for ever.
If we examine the connection between man and his weapon we find that
the latter differs from an eagle’s beak or a tiger’s claw in but one
essential point: it is no longer an integral part of the organism. It
can be detached at will, and replaced by another weapon. Its separation
or destruction does not imply an injury to the organism. Man is not
put out of action by losing his weapon. He is only reduced to his
original position with respect to his antagonist. And even that is no
irreparable loss so long as he has other weapons at his command. Thus
the same step which vastly increased his offensive power also made him
comparatively immune to attack.
Now, a weapon in a man’s hand, so long as it is in active use as a
weapon, is a part of the man himself. It is true that he can lose it
without perishing himself, but he can also lose an arm or a leg and
still survive. The mere fact that the man’s blood circulates in his
natural leg and not in a wooden leg he may substitute for it makes
no essential difference. He may kick with either. And we know that
a man’s leg, like all the cells of his body, is largely compound
of inert matter such as food products and waste products, besides
being nine-tenths water――an inorganic substance. A wooden leg, or any
weapon which a man may use, may therefore be regarded as a limb of the
man’s body, so long, that is, as it is in active use. And if a “soul”
animates that man’s body and drives it to perform deeds of valour, the
same soul will animate his weapon. The soul of the weapon is the soul
of the man who uses it.
There is an increasing tendency in modern thought to abolish the
distinction between soul and body and to regard them as one and
indivisible. Adopting that view, we may assert that the use of a weapon
means the enlargement of a man’s body and the simultaneous expansion
of his soul. Every weapon, every tool, every machine is the embodiment
of a human thought and purpose. The user adopts that thought and
purpose, and behold――the machine has found its soul!
II
Man is an animal who laughs and cooks.
When Prometheus had caught some sparks from the chariot of the sun and
brought them safely to earth, hidden in a tube, there was consternation
on Mount Olympus. The Conservative Government of that privileged
stronghold trembled for its celestial prerogatives. It was all very
well, they said, for Hephæstus to blow his bellows in his workshop and
produce beautiful things for Olympians, so long as he did it under
proper supervision. But fire, once brought to earth, would set the
whole world ablaze and consume them in their palaces.
Hephæstus himself was not perturbed. Remembering the kindness he
met with on Lemnos after his brutal expulsion from the company of
the gods, he secretly sympathized with Prometheus and his race, and
planned a closer co-operation with mankind. His Sicilian workshops
saw him oftener than before, hobbling about among his furnaces and
experimenting with every kind of ore and ingot. Wherever he went,
whether among gods or men, his kindness and his merry humour made him a
general favourite.
Although he often made weapons, he much preferred to make tools and
ornaments. Among the Olympians, his strangely begotten “sister” Athene
was his closest ally. Like him, she favoured the arts of peace rather
than those of war, and despised the noisy and swashbuckling Ares.
When Athene went to take up her abode in her Parthenon at Athens, he
forsook Olympus and removed his furnaces to Lipari, off the Sicilian
coast. And it was in Sicily, some centuries later, that his great
disciple Archimedes was born, the man who was fitted and destined to
establish the reign of Hephæstus in spite of the strenuous opposition
of the Roman republic and its subsequent imperial and ecclesiastical
successors.
When man was endowed with fire he received the gift without knowing
whence it came or what it meant. Greek mythology, with its deep
insight into unseen things, presents us Helios, the sun-god, as a
friend of Hephæstus, the god of fire. We moderns express the same truth
differently. We say that all fire on earth is ultimately derived from
the sun. Archimedes kindled fires――preferably in Roman ships――by means
of concave mirrors which condensed the heat of the sun to a focus. The
fuel for the fires was also provided by the heat of the sun, absorbed
by the chlorophyll of the leaves in the forest and used to build up
combustible wood and other products. The firing of the wood reversed
the process of accumulation of solar energy and provided light and heat
by day and by night, independently of the sun, the original giver.
For a hundred million years already had the sun shone on a habitable
earth, pouring out its light and heat and nourishing the luxuriant
vegetation which covered most of the globe. For untold ages had the
plants stored up the sunlight for some unknown end. That end became
manifest when Prometheus kindled the first fire and made a new realm
accessible to man. Till then, mankind had undergone the annual and
daily vicissitudes of heat and cold due to the days and the seasons,
but he had not controlled them. When he acquired the mastery of fire,
he was enabled to wander north and south and take with him in his
brazier the accustomed heat of the tropics.
But there was more to come. The invention of pottery――another great
epoch――enabled him to create a solar furnace on a small scale. It
enabled him to create a miniature world where the heat was much greater
than in his own world. He soon found that plants and animals, passed
through this new world, became richer and more palatable, and in many
ways better adapted to his digestive system. It must have seemed highly
“unnatural” at first to accelerate the ripening of fruits and predigest
animal food by plunging them into water in which no living thing could
survive, but the departure from the habits of the animal world, once
begun, was never arrested, and it is still proceeding in our own day.
Our remote progenitors must have looked upon the guardians of their
fires with much the same awe as that which mediæval people felt for
sorcerers and alchemists, and with rather more justification. For man
had everything to learn about the new power placed in his hands. He
was beginning to find his way about a new world in which the ordinary
laws of Nature were suspended. Water was no longer cold and wet in that
world. It was hot as the sun and thin as smoke. It no longer flowed
but rose in the air. Salt rapidly became invisible in it, but could as
rapidly be recovered by adding more fire. There was as much to learn
about fire as there was about X-rays in 1895 and about “atmospherics”
to-day.
The possession of fire turned winter into summer and night into day.
It lengthened the life-time of its fortunate possessors. But it did
much more than that. It endowed mankind with a number of gifts which
must, in his primitive condition, have appeared to him as supernatural.
It gave him substances which combined the hardness of stone with the
toughness of wood. It enabled him to mould these substances into any
desired shape by the softening action of excessive heat. Hephæstus
himself cast his products in bronze, having cunningly mixed copper with
tin in order to produce an alloy combining hardness with ductility. But
he and his later disciples found the perfect substance in iron, which,
though requiring an extreme degree of heat, yielded weapons and tools
of unsurpassed power and strength.
And thus it was that Hephæstus and his human allies prepared that
career of conquest which eventually swept over the earth and made all
things new. The unprogressive Zeus, content with having learnt how to
shake Olympus with a nod of his head, perished in the flood of new
ideas from the East. Hephæstus, alone of all that shining company, had
established a firm footing in the world. For the work of his hands had
trained his brain and enabled it to build up a scheme of the cosmos
in which every detail corresponded to some ascertained reality. And
so, while Egyptian priests were speculating about the weight of a
soul, while Hindu sects were vying with each other in producing the
most hideous idols, and while Christian theologians were endeavouring
to prove that three ones make one, Hephæstus and his followers were
engaged in founding that superb edifice of knowledge which was destined
to outlast the fall of empires and the dark ages which followed the
eclipse of classical learning.
But even as late as 1800 A.D., in spite of the mariner’s compass,
the printing press, and gunpowder, the ground won by Hephæstus was
very small. The postal services in Europe were inferior to that of
the Cæsars, there was no telegraphic system equal to that of the
ancient Persians, and the most stately sailing ship barely excelled
the classical trireme. The fruits of the work of Newcomen and Watt and
Papin had not yet blossomed. When they did come forth, things happened
swiftly. Fire was made to generate steam, and steam, in the course
of a century, transformed the world. The motive-power being there,
it was put to a million uses. The Wheel became the most important of
mechanical contrivances. Now a wheel is a thing which, in the organic
world, is simply impossible. In the days when microscopes were of
feeble power, it was thought that the “wheel animalcule,” called
_Vorticella_, had small wheels revolving on the rim of its opening to
gather in the floating food particles. But higher magnifying power
showed that the appearance was an illusion created by the oscillation
of the fine hairs fixed round the aperture. A wheel revolving on a
shaft implies a separation which precludes all organic connection.
Had it been otherwise, an animal running on its own wheels would have
made its appearance on earth long ago. The shaft of the steam engine
could be provided with numerous pulleys, each capable of driving a
machine connected with it by a belt. Then arose that marvellous crop
of mechanical combinations which brought about the age of mechanism,
combinations which, in the last resort, can be reduced to sliding
couples and turning couples, and can be catalogued by means of formulæ,
like words in a dictionary. So numerous were these inventions, so
widespread was their use, and so great their effect on the minds of
those generations, that a great illusion arose which coloured the
philosophies of a whole century and has left traces even in modern
times. People became so accustomed to the perfect functioning of a
machine or a clock, so impressed with its regularity and intelligible
complexity, that they began to look upon mechanism as a primary thing
capable of “explaining” many non-mechanical things, not excluding
the phenomena of life. Why should not man himself, the inventor of
machinery, be a machine? If any functions of his body seemed beyond
explanation on mechanical lines, might this not be solely due to their
great complexity?
In a recent article in _Nature_, Professor Fraser Harris puts the
matter tersely as follows:
“Because the stomach ‘works’ rhythmically and predictably we may
call it a machine for turning out pepsin from blood and liken it to a
machine for turning out (say) newspapers, but the secretion of pepsin
is not mechanical, nor is the output of newspapers vital.”
The strangest point about the materialistic or mechanistic conception
of things is that every machine without exception has an inherent
purpose and design. It is intended by its inventor to do certain
definite things in a certain definite way. If an animal, therefore,
is a machine, it must have a design and purpose, and presumably a
designer. But the main idea underlying the mechanistic hypothesis was
to eliminate the idea of purpose altogether, and reduce the universe to
an accidental configuration of lifeless atoms.
It is difficult to see how this attempt to reverse the rôle of Potter
and Pot could ever have satisfied enquiring and well-balanced minds,
but it is a fact that mechanistic views of life, after a period of
almost general acceptance, are still prevalent among biologists whose
education in the principles of logic has been somewhat hurried.
The majority, however, have returned to the saner view that it is
useless to explain the known by the less known. Human purpose is a
primary fact of experience, and the embodiment of a human purpose in a
tool or machine is a process which cannot be denied on any reasonable
grounds. Now, a “purpose” is a datum of the mind, which cannot be
reduced to any simpler elements. The purpose of a machine is the
psychical element embodied in it. Briefly, we may call it the “soul
of the machine.” Every machine has a psychical element, a purpose,
a “soul.” It is therefore, simpler, more in accordance with sound
philosophical principles, more direct and “economical” to explain
machines in terms of psychology than to explain human bodies in terms
of mechanism.
The victories of Hephæstus are victories of mind over matter. The
“mechanical age,” which to some appears as the very negation of the
soul, is, on the contrary, the age of supreme psychical achievement.
Science and invention are for ever annexing fresh regions of the
universe and subjecting them to the free play of our mental faculties.
The process of bringing material things into subjection to our will is
a process of sublimation, which does not drag us down to the dust, but
raises up dust into the realms of immortal spirit.
III
... The liquid Ore he dreind
Into fit moulds prepar’d; from which he form’d
First his own Tooles; then, what might be wrought
Fusil or grav’n in mettle.
At the time when the first man decided to go forth into the world
provided with weapons not furnished by nature (in other words,
“unnatural”) the lines of development adopted by nature had ended in
an _impasse_. Mere size had been found ineffective, and the giant
Reptilians had disappeared from the earth. The Mammoth and the great
Rorqual Whale were the largest animals then in existence, and nature
had retraced her steps somewhat as shipbuilding did in the nineteenth
century after the building of the _Great Eastern_. Of the countless
forms of animal and vegetable life, many had disappeared entirely,
being no longer suited to climatic or other changes of environment.
There was no prospect of higher development unless an entirely new path
could be found. We may put the situation in another way by paraphrasing
an ancient tribal account of the origin of things:
“In the Beginning there was the Sun and the Earth.
“And the Sun and the Earth said: Let there be Life. And the Earth
covered itself with a living coat of green, fed by the Sun.
“And the Earth said: Let there be Moving Life. And Life began to Move
about, fed by the Life that was green and stood still.
“And the Earth said: Let there be Man, and let him be fed by the Green
Life and the Moving Life, and let him subdue all Life, and let him
subdue Me and serve Me and make Me great in the Heavens.”
And so the Earth brought forth Man, her latest and greatest Experiment.
For a long time he was a rather inferior animal, but when he began to
throw stones and spears he launched out on his true career, a career
destined to culminate in the complete mastery of his native planet and
the apotheosis of the Earth.
The pre-human Animal had already learned to use the world of plants
for purposes of nutrition, and to use the mineral world for dwelling
purposes. Improving upon the methods of his predecessors, man made the
land and sea his province, and drew from it not only nourishment but
the means of extending his dominion. “He that hath, to him shall be
given.” And this extension became more and more rapid. Living, as we
do, in an age of continually accelerated progress, we find it difficult
to realize its rapidity.
We are caught in a flood. From day to day things are changing. What we
write to-day is obsolete to-morrow. The clock ticks on the mantelpiece
as it did twenty years ago, but outside in the road is the roar of
motor traffic. The clip-clop of the horses’ hooves is no longer heard.
Hephæstus has put his fires into the interior of the motor engine,
and found yet another way of using sunlight accumulated in the earth
millions of years ago, instead of relying upon the solar energy stored
in the grass eaten by the horse.
Fire has made all things new. We are surrounded by its gifts. My pen
has passed through many fires before it reached my hand. All round me
are traces of machinery and mechanism. The paper on which I write is
calendered in the paper mills. I am aware that it is not as lasting as
“hand-made” paper, and that it will not survive centuries of use like
Gutenberg’s bibles. But what matter? If there is anything worthy of
survival in what I write it will survive, even though it may require to
be cast in bronze. If it is good it will be _aere perennius_.
Mankind may be likened to a vast army on the march. It is preceded by:
(1) Pathfinders, called explorers, inventors, and discoverers, whose
business it is to find new avenues of development and achievement.
Then come the
(2) Commanders with their staff of Organizers. These direct and
co-ordinate the movements of the masses in directions judged to be for
the general welfare. They are followed by
(3) The Rank and File, consisting of those who live and work along
accepted and well-established lines in all grades of society, taking no
risks and making no changes.
(4) The Stragglers, or those who work for themselves alone, without
reference to the needs and prospects of the community. Among these
must be classed the squatters and backwoodsmen, and small crofters and
peasants who grow their own food and weave their own cloth. They do not
belong to civilized society, though they do no harm to it and cannot
quite escape its influence.
(5) The Campfollowers and Vultures, who have no regard for the welfare
of the community, but prey upon it for their own ends.
Classes (1) and (2) are by far the most important and valuable
constituents of the human race. They are the growing element, the
“cambium,” the grey matter of the brain. Whoever has sufficient
originality to strike out an original course, combined with loyalty
to humanity at large or to a smaller community; whoever is capable
of leadership, whether in war or peace, art or commerce, industry
or politics; whoever can lead others forward and inspire them with
courage to face difficulties――he belongs to the _élite_ of mankind,
to whatever grade of society he may belong. Far behind his class come
the rank and file of commonplace drudges, who work in a rut and submit
to being led like sheep. They may be clerks, domestic servants, trade
union operatives, pensioners, or small investors. They form the large,
undistinguished, but useful mass of humanity. Many kings have belonged
to this class.
Both the large capitalist and the trade union boss I should class
among the Commanders, and I should assign them a high rank in human
progressive elements. The former is often a Pathfinder in commerce and
industry, and the latter often points the way to the betterment of
manual workers. Both are in a position of great power, but are exposed
to the temptation to abuse it. The financier may succeed in restricting
the free market in an important human community for his own enrichment
and aggrandizement. The trade union boss may make a “corner” in a
certain form of labour and so deprive the community of some essential
commodity, such as housing accommodation. When this degeneration takes
place, both these types must be put into the Vulture class.
The same judgment must be passed on those who use the machinery of the
medium of exchange to further objects contrary to the interests of the
community, such as usurers, and purveyors of intoxicant drugs. These
also are among the Vultures.
When the first armed man transferred a method employed by nature into
a new medium, and derived his armour from the outer world instead
of growing it in his own organism, he took a step which led to many
similar re-interpretations. One of the most important of such steps
was Organization. The very word recalls its “organic” origin. The
organs of the human body form an interdependent community with a common
interest. The organs again are composed of tissues, and the tissues of
individual cells having, as many biologists believe, a rudimentary
consciousness of their own. All these――some millions of millions of
millions――form a vast and closely-organized community consisting of
many more distinct individuals than there are human beings on earth.
The human race is such an organized community. A swarm of bees is
another, but while the latter only deals with “natural” food-supplies
and housing materials, the human community, thanks primarily to the use
of fire, gathers its resources from realms utterly inaccessible to the
ordinary animal, and establishes an unassailable superiority. Thus the
human army, consisting of Pathfinders, Organizers, Rank and File, and
Stragglers, with a trail of Vultures behind, presses ever forward on
its victorious march of progress.
Its general procedure may be represented as follows:
The Pathfinders are in front, seeking out new avenues of advance.
They may discover a new coal mine or oil well or mineral deposit; a
more economical method of lighting and heating; an improved method
of weaving or printing; a new medicine; a new formula for expressing
numerical relations; an improved method of transmitting news; or merely
a simplified method of mending socks. Whatever it may be, the new
discovery is passed on to the organizers, the captains of industry, the
capitalists and financiers, and the trade unions. In a well-organized
community, the discovery or invention is given every opportunity of
proving its value. Where vested interests and monopolies stand in the
way, either in the camp of the capitalists and property holders or
in the ranks of labour, much opposition may be encountered, and the
community may be deprived of the advantages of the new discovery. But
if there is no such opposition, the work incidental to the utilization
of the discovery is distributed by the organizers among the rank and
file, consisting of mechanics, clerks, and small investors. As soon as
the industry is successfully established, the Vultures begin to hover
round. Some of them seek to drive the industry into a corner where
it can only exist by serving the interests of the Vultures. Other
Vultures endeavour to corner the labour trained by the pathfinders and
pioneers and hold the new industry to ransom. But in a well-organized
community these nefarious activities are kept within bounds. The
pathfinders, the organizers, and the rank and file are given their due
credit and reward, and the community reaps the full benefit of the
discovery.
And now let us examine the activities of the Pathfinders. In classical
times the most audacious and renowned of these were the Phœnicians,
who, armed with their shields and corselets of “oak and triple
bronze,” sailed through the Pillars of Hercules out from the tideless
Mediterranean into the unknown terrors of the Atlantic. Their ships
were seen in the Baltic, trading woven purple garments for amber, and
on the British coasts in search of tin. At the request of an Egyptian
Pharao, they circumnavigated Africa, and brought back wildly improbable
but, nevertheless, true stories about new constellations and the sun
culminating in the north.
In Egypt itself explorers and discoverers of another kind were busy.
The science of Chemistry was born there, and named after “Chem,”
the native name of Egypt. In Greece and its colonies the science of
Geometry attained a high standard, while Syracuse stands out as the
home of Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians, physicists,
and inventors of all time. These Pathfinders enriched humanity with
priceless gifts. They surveyed the field of possible discovery from a
high altitude, and their clear vision traced out the paths to higher
achievement, to be trodden by their successors.
Had they lived in better-organized communities, their labours would
have been turned to greater advantage, and would have benefited a
greater number of their fellow men. But the day of capitalism and
mass-production had not yet come. The splendid achievements of an
Archimedes only served to benefit a tyrant, and his single-handed
scientific fight against the Romans ended in disaster to his beloved
city.
In Greek and Roman days, owing to the lop-sided organization of human
society, scientific discoveries could only benefit a few powerful
people. The downtrodden underlings were unaffected by the work of the
Pathfinders. They had to await the dawn of the Industrial Age before
they could take part in the progress of the _élite_. Yet it must be
put to the credit of the Hieros, the Medicis, and the greater of the
Bourbon and Stuart Kings that they fostered the advancement of science
and protected the Pathfinders from the persecution of ecclesiastical
and other vultures.
The invention of gunpowder laid low the chivalry of the Middle Ages.
The Hobbling God triumphed over the mail-clad monopolist on horseback.
The Sudden Fire armed the foot-soldier with a winged shaft of death.
The stone-thrower had became the unerring sharp-shooter. The range of
human power increased apace. The glass-blower with his fiery furnace
produced cunning contrivances of glass which increased the range of the
human eye twenty or thirty-fold. A free philosopher like Spinoza could
discourse of the fundamental substance without fear or favour, since
the grinding of optical glasses assured him an independent livelihood.
Then came the French Revolution with its clarion call to a wider
organization of humanity, which was eventually brought about, not by
speeches and pamphlets, but by the harnessing of coal to inaugurate the
Mechanical Age.
The nineteenth century saw the fulfilment of the dream of an organized
Humanity, a human world unified, not by the spread of humanitarian
philosophies, but by the material bonds of progress.
Some of my critics have ridiculed my “robust” belief in the reality of
progress through invention and the use of machinery. I see no reason
to modify my view. A generation ago, Ruskin deplored the spread of
railways which scored their lines through “bleeding landscapes.” To me
a railway line is a thing of beauty, wherever it may be found. It is a
symbol of a higher will and of a purpose transcending the puny sphere
of the individual. To see the rails is as if the sinews and muscles
of some supernatural being were made visible and accessible to me.
And who shall say that I am wrong in that feeling? A railway _is_ an
organization superior to man. “Societies,” says Edward Carpenter,[3]
“not only of bees (as Maeterlinck has shown), but of all creatures
up to man, have, _qua_ societies, a life of their own, inclusive of
and superadded to that of their individual members.” And so a railway
appears to me as an individual of a higher order, closely organized and
endowed with a life of its own. Its mental equipment is its personnel,
its directors, clerks, drivers, guards and porters. Its body consists
of rails, bridges, tunnels, stations and rolling stock. It has a
soul and a living purpose. It has a power of self-maintenance and
self-preservation and a rudimentary memory.
[3] _The Art of Creation._
I heartily sympathize with the child who adores a locomotive engine.
To him, nothing could be more lavishly fraught with beauty. I saw a
little while ago a powerful engine at Waterloo Station at the head
of an express train for Bournemouth. It was a thing of perfect and
satisfying beauty. Its lines suggested calmness and strength and speed.
The wisp of steam about its safety valve spoke of well-controlled
powers within its massive frame. The driver, a clear-eyed man with
trusty hands and sturdy body, was a noble representative of Hephæstus.
One felt that the load of health-seeking humanity behind him was in
safe hands, that his nerves and muscles would work as perfectly as
the engine he regarded with such loving attention, and that the 108
miles of the non-stop journey would be accomplished without a hitch.
The beneficent monster lay there in the morning sun, ready to spring
forward on its swift trajectory across the “bleeding landscape”! And
there are people who can look upon the eager children in the train,
armed with their spades and buckets for playing in the health-giving
southern sunshine, and deny the progressiveness of the Mechanical Age!
They will probably argue, of course, that if it were not for the
smoke of the city, due to the “fires of Hephæstus,” there would be no
necessity to have trains to carry the children to the seaside. But the
smoke of cities is due mainly to incomplete combustion in domestic
hearths, and the remedy lies not in the discouragement of mechanical
invention but in its further extension until it provides us with a
smokeless city.
The fires of Hephæstus are fashioning a new world. They are welding
humanity into a coherent mass. All the metals, all the ninety chemical
elements, are being pressed into service. Whose service? The service
of a race whose destiny we can as yet only dimly appreciate. Already
we command temperatures varying from a region within a few degrees of
the absolute zero to within a few hundred degrees of the heat of the
sun. The sight of our eyes has been supplemented to such an extent that
we can appreciate and deal with some fifteen octaves of visible and
invisible light instead of the single octave “naturally” accessible
to our sight. We command pressures of tons per square millimetre and
degrees of vacuum down to a hundred-millionth of an atmosphere. We can
photograph the track of a single atom tearing its way through moist
air. We can print 500,000 copies of a paper of 150,000 words daily
and sell it for a penny. We have banished bears and wolves from our
home countries and have learnt to wage war against invisible germs of
disease. We have acquired the power of bringing beautiful music into
the homes of our humblest citizens. The luxuries of our forbears are
the common possessions of our own generation. If we are not happier
than our ancestors, the fault lies in ourselves, in our ingratitude
and lack of imagination. Or must we conclude that happiness is a
negligible thing in the great scheme of progress, and that that scheme
does not concern itself with our individual feelings?
I for one believe that happiness is on the up-grade, too. Hephæstus is
not only a strong and a clever god, but a god with a sense of humour
and a very lovable character.
IV
Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge, dreamt not yet.
The empire of Hephæstus is expanding before our eyes. His bellows blow
through our blast furnaces. His anvils ring in thousands of factories.
His engines career over the land, and his steamers over the sea. His
internal-combustion cars are strung out along the roadways, and his
avions run their furrows through the clouds. Wherever he goes, he
lightens the burdens of humanity and gladdens all hearts with his
gifts. He brings warmth and light into dark places. He draws mankind
closer and closer together. He draws them together without diminishing
the distance between them. He simply makes that distance impotent to
hold them apart. He enables the city children to leave their slums
and gather fresh health in the open country. He gives the grimed city
worker fresh clear air wherein to sleep. His lorries, thundering along
the highways, tighten the bonds between the farmer who gathers the
fruit and the town dweller who consumes it.
Nor is Hephæstus satisfied yet. His task is but half finished. The
whole earth must be Vulcanized.
The God of Fire and of Iron hobbles over the broad earth, seeking and
finding new paths of advancement towards a better and fuller life.
Man has become less and less limited by his permanent organism, that
Body which in the beginning was all he possessed. He has now as many
different shapes as ever Proteus had, and he can assume any of them
at will. At one time he has the shape of a rowing boat, his arms
prolonged seven feet or more till his blades skim the water. Again, his
legs will be two wheels, and his body will be like those steeds with
fire-breathing nostrils which Hephæstus made for the King of Colchis.
Again, the pupil of his eye will grow until its diameter measures 100
inches and then he will sound the depths of the heavens with the power
of 100,000 eyes in one. When he goes to war, he throws his “stone”
some seventy miles and arms it with vast destruction. He belches forth
deadly vapours which choke and strangle his enemies. He becomes an
armed slug creeping over all obstacles and destroying as he creeps.
In times of peace he dresses in various garbs to suit his changing
occupation. His womenfolk emphasize and glorify their variety of
personal presentation and expression. Protea shines in all the colours
and shades of the rainbow, and invents new colours and new forms every
day, forms of dress, of outline, and of her very bodily figure.
The resignations and renunciations of former ages are forgotten. Music,
travel, pictures, education――the luxuries of past generations are the
common property of all to-day. That is the sort of Communism which is
feasible and reasonable. Take all the luxuries and good things of this
life and bring them within reach of all by cheapening their cost of
production. Travel at a pound a mile is a luxury. Travel at a penny a
mile becomes a “necessity” as soon as people get used to it and take it
for granted.
Security and seclusion are privileges cherished by what used to be
called the “aristocrats.” Place both within reach of the masses by
insurance and by transport facilities. Make all these luxuries and
privileges common property. It is not so many centuries ago that a
mariner’s compass was bartered for diamonds. To-day it costs a penny.
And then we come upon a difficulty. When a thing becomes common
property, or so cheap as to be of practically no price, it ceases to be
coveted. There is a tendency deep-rooted in the human heart to reach
out beyond the things of to-day for something not yet attained. When
Communism has shared out the earth, it will ask for the moon. Humanity
will never assume a “dead level of mediocrity.” There will always be
the Thyroid Type, energetic, inquisitive, sensitive, inventive, and
restless. The class of Pathfinders will be recruited from that type.
The Pituitary Type will furnish commanders and organizers, while the
Adrenal Type will furnish the rank and file. But the intermixture of
the various types will bring out special constitutions and varieties in
unexpected quarters, and it behoves us to keep “_la carrière ouverte
aux talents_.”
Thus the human army will march forward, led by a Pillar of Fire. Its
pace will be constantly accelerated, but we shall hardly be aware of
it, for our methods of measuring time will change in the same ratio.
A well-made motor-car on a smooth road can hum along sweetly at sixty
miles an hour, and its occupants will be less impressed and excited
than they would be by the horse careering at 20 miles per hour! And
what are all these speeds to the absolutely smooth planetary speed of
nineteen miles per second!
It has been asserted that the tremendous powers conferred upon man
by machinery have produced the terrific wars of recent times by
placing power in the wrong hands. There may be some justice in this,
but the amount of destruction is negligible in comparison with the
amount of construction and reparation. When Kitchener saved a few
hundred casualties at Paardeberg by sparing his men, he lost 10,000 at
Bloemfontein by enteric fever. The bloodiest war is sometimes the least
costly on balance. The greatest war of all history ended but seven
years ago, and already the beaten nations have healed up their wounds
and are looking forward to the future with greater confidence than
many of the “victorious” nations. Mankind is increasing the rapidity
of its nervous reaction to emergencies and injuries. The leucocytes
of the body politic set to work sooner and more effectively to heal
the damage. Mankind as an organism is daily improving its circulatory
system, _alias_ its transport facilities. Its nervous system closely
imitates organic nerves by its cables and land-lines, and it improves
upon nature by adding wireless communication and resonance to the
organic devices of the body.
Mankind is being moulded into a single compact self-contained body on
the anvil of Hephæstus. It is still subject to feverish ailments and
some chronic diseases. But the general outlines of future development
are clearly discernible. There must be pauses and set-backs. The
brilliant scientific and artistic development of classical Hellenism
was all but lost in the destruction of the Roman civilization. But
the Arabs kept the flickering flame alive until Europe awoke from
its torpor and lit its torch once more. Since then there has been no
turning back. The age of science, discovery, and invention, the age
of mechanism and machinery and power, has come and come to stay. Man,
liberated from mechanical drudgery by the machine, has time to develop
his intellectual and artistic powers. His necessities being supplied by
pressing a button, he is liberated to enjoy a more varied existence.
If some men and women are still bound to monotonous tasks, it does
not necessarily mean unhappiness, for the Pathfinders’ life is one of
constant care and much anxiety. Discovery is 90 per cent. failure,
and something like a daily routine of regular and monotonous work
sometimes appears in the light of a blissful refuge. Besides, the human
heart and organism easily falls into a routine in which daily work is
hardly felt, being done without conscious effort. This fact is often
forgotten by those who envy the life of the organizer and financier,
which is one of much risk and anxiety, relieved by an occasional big
prize.
The ideal state of things would be attained if those of an adventurous
disposition could be given the adventurous part of human activity, and
if those who are plodders by nature could be left to do the plodding.
That is a matter for future development, either consciously fostered by
wise leaders of our race, or unconsciously evolved from the depths of
wisdom hidden below the threshold of the racial consciousness.
But the goal is in sight. The earth is being organized and unified
under the ægis of the human race, the protoplasm of this planet, the
race which, transcending the mechanism and long-established traditions
of its own germ-plasm, enlarged and multiplied its functions until
it acquired the use of, fire. Upon that achievement it built an
unprecedented form of life, a super-“natural” edifice of infinite
power, as yet but dimly realized, but which in its full beauty and
perfection will be nothing less than Divine.
THE END.
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
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