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Gerald Stanley Lee
The Voice of the Machines
An Introduction to the Twentieth Century
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066194130
Table of Contents
MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW
ON MAKING PEOPLE PROUD OF THE WORLD
PLATO AND THE GENERAL ELECTRIC WORKS
HEWING AWAY ON THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH
THE GRUDGE AGAINST THE INFINITE
THE IDEA OF THE UNSEEN AND INTANGIBLE
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.