tion>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
