Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Lee Spector and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net The Voice of the Machines An Introduction to the Twentieth Century BY Gerald Stanley Lee The Mount Tom Press Northampton, Massachusetts COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY THE MOUNT TOM PRESS TO JENNETTE LEE ... "Now and then my fancy caught A flying glimpse of a good life beyond-- Something of ships and sunlight, streets and singing, Troy falling, and the ages coming back, And ages coming forward."... Contents PART I THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES I.--Machines as Seen from a Meadow II.--As Seen through a Hatchway III.--The Souls of Machines IV.--Poets V.--Gentlemen VI.--Prophets PART II THE LANGUAGE OF THE MACHINES I.--As Good as Ours II.--On Being Busy and Still III.--On Not Showing Off IV.--On Making People Proud of the World V.--A Modest Universe PART III THE MACHINES AS POETS I.--Plato and the General Electric Works II.--Hewing away on the Heavens and the Earth III.--The Grudge against the Infinite IV.--Symbolism in Modern Art V.--The Machines as Artists VI.--The Machines as Philosophers PART IV THE IDEAS BEHIND THE MACHINES I.--The Idea of Incarnation II.--The Idea of Size III.--The Idea of Liberty IV.--The Idea of Immortality V.--The Idea of God VI.--The Idea of the Unseen and the Intangible VII.--The Idea of Great Men VIII.--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.