Not least convincing is the fact that a considerable proportion of those who are held unremittingly to the service of the machine process “break down,” fall into premature decay. Physically and spiritually these modern peoples are better adapted to life under conditions radically different from those imposed by this modern technology.[145] All of which goes to show, what is the point here in question, that however exacting and however pervasive the discipline of the machine process may be, it can not, after all, achieve its perfect work in the way of habituation in the population of Christendom as it stands. The limit of tolerance native to the race, physically and spiritually, is short of that unmitigated materialism and unremitting mechanical routine to which the machine technology incontinently drives. * * * * * For anything like a comprehensive view of the effects which the machine technology has had on the scope and method of knowledge in modern times it is necessary to turn back to its beginnings. Historically the machine age succeeds the era of handicraft, but the two overlap very extensively. So much so that while the era of the machine technology is commonly held to have set in something like a century and a half ago it is still too early to assert that the industrial system has cleared itself of the remnants of handicraft or that the habits of thought suitable to the days of handicraft are no longer decisive in the current legal and popular apprehension of industrial relations. The discipline of the machine process has not yet had time, nor has it had a clear field. The best that can be looked for, therefore, in the way of habits of thought conforming to the ways and means of the machine process should be something of a progressive approximation; and the considerations recited in the last few paragraphs should leave it doubtful whether anything more than an imperfect approximation to the logic of the machine process can be achieved, through any length of training, by the peoples among whom the greatest advance in that direction has already been made.