The Voice of the Machines Part 10

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 G.o.d. He is the kind of G.o.d 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, "G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.

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 comrades.h.i.+p.

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.