Sigmoid Flexure Mundus Carlyle

[Terrance]

In fact, if we look deeper, we shall find that this faith in Mechanism
has now struck its roots down into man's most intimate, primary sources
of conviction; and is thence sending up, over his whole life and
activity, innumerable stems, -- fruitbearing and poison-bearing. The
truth is, men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and
hope, and work only in the Visible; or, to speak it in other
words: This is not a Religious age. Only the material, the immediately
practical, not the divine and spiritual, is important to us. The
infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite,
conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good;
but a calculation of the Profitable. Worship, indeed, in any sense, is
not recognised among us, or is mechanically explained into Fear of pain,
or Hope of pleasure. Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued
external Nature
for us, and we think it will do all other things. We are Giants in
physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that
strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.



The strong Mechanical character, so visible in the spiritual pursuits
and methods of this age, may be traced much farther into the condition
and prevailing disposition of our spiritual nature itself. Consider, for
example, the general fashion of Intellect in [111/112] this era.
Intellect, the power man has of knowing and believing, is now nearly
synonymous with Logic, or the mere power of arranging and communicating.
Its implement is not Meditation, but Argument. "Cause and effect" is
almost the
only category under which we look at, and work with, all Nature. Our
first question with regard to any object is not, What is it? but, How is
it? We are no longer instinctively driven to apprehend, and lay to
heart, what is Good and Lovely, but rather to inquire, as onlookers, how
it is produced, whence it comes, whither it goes. Our favourite
Philosophers have no love and no hatred; they stand among us not to do,
nor to create anything, but as a sort of Logic mills, to grind out the
true causes
and effects of all that is done and created. To the eye of a Smith, a
Hume or a Constant, all is well that works quietly. An Order of Ignatius
Loyola, a Presbyterianism of John Knox, a Wickliffe or a Henry the
Eighth, are simply so many mechanical phenomena, caused or causing.


THE HAMMER

  I have seen the old gods go
  and the new gods come
  Day by day
  and year by year
  The idols fall
  and the idols rise
  Today
  I worship the hammer
                  -Carl Sandburg-