Our Gods of Steel
" The new situation in the thought of to-day arises from the fact that scientific theory is outrunning common sense."--
PROFESSOR WHITE HEAD.
IT is increasingly evident that the ineteenth century's admiration for the achievements of science is being gradually replaced by an attitude of fear and dis- trust. For our fathers science was the chief expression of that law of progress in which they so enthusiastically believed, and to which they considered their own age had borne such triumphant witness. It had changed and would change increasingly the face of the earth ; it had given and would give increasingly command over the forces of Nature ; it would lighten men's toil, rid their souls of superstitious fears and unlock the hidden secrets of the universe. Our own age, which has seen many nine- teenth-century idols fall from their pedestals, is more particularly sceptical about the benevolence of the god of science. Our scepticism expresses itself in two different ways ; we fear that science will lead us to turn ourselves into machines in time of peace, and to exterminate one another ill time of war.
Samuel Butler, that product of our age born half a century before his time, was the first to discern the danger that lurked in the application of science to industry. In his Book of the Machines he draws a terrifying picture of the growing subservience of the Brewhonians to machinery. Created to serve men, machines will only serve on condition of being served " and that too upon their own terms ; the moment their terms are not complied with, they jib, and either smash themselves and all whom they can reach, or turn churlish and refuse to work at all. How many men at this hour are living in bondage to the maehines Haw many spend their whole lives from the cradle to the grave, in tending them night and day ? "
Butler proceeds to point out that already more men are engaged in tending machines than in looking after other men. The number of those who are bound to the machines as slaves and of those who spend their lives in seeking the advancement of machines is increasing ; can a( then resist the conclusion that the machines are &till. gaining ground on us ?
The line of thought which Butler started has founti renewed expression in the growing urgency of our times. Middleton Murry pointed out in a recent number of the Spectator that the memories of machines are destroying human initiative and taking from life the spirit of adven- ture. In Karel Capek's play, R.U.R., the machines which men have made rise in revolt and dispossesstheir 1 masters. The machines are, it seems, the next level to be reached by evolutionary -development. The animals evolved man, and he superseded them ; man has evolved the machines, which will supersede him in his turn. The film Metropolis gives concrete shape and form to the fancies of Butler and portrays them for our warning and instruction in a city of the future. We witness the ceaseless activity of the machines ; we see the hordes of workmen,. sad-faced, black-clothed, all looking alike, reduced to the status of Robots by their enforced slaver). to machines. If the machines are not continuous!) tended by their human slaves, they go mad, or break, or t blow up, and wreak a terrible vengeance upon those responsible for neglecting them. It is not only that i) machines grow daily more powerful; it is that the lives of the men who tend them must of necessity become mechanized through the automatic habits of the creatures they serve. Thus science introduces mechanization into life itself; there is a growth in uniformity and automatism, lives are robbed of colour and variety, and men's thoughts conform increasingly to a common pattern. The dangers with which science has invested warfare need not be elaborated here. Articles on the horrors of the next war constantly appear in the Press. The big cities, we are told, will be in the front line, and bombs and poison gas will exterminate their helpless inhabitants in less time than it used to take to mow down a line of infantry. If, to follow out a fancy of Dean Inge's, we were to take an extract from the pages of a Martian history of the universe written in the year 2500 A.D., we might read somewhat as follows: On our neighbouring . planet, the earth, the age of the reptiles was succeeded by that of the greater mammals. Of these, the hominidae, though a comparatively weakly species suffering under grave physical defects, were nevertheless enabled through their possession of a low-grade cunning, in which pessi- mistic writers have detected the forerunner of our Martian intelligence, to establish a complete domination over the planet. So ruthlessly did they use this domination to prey upon every other species that they would rapidly have denuded the planet of life, had it not been that their energies were absorbed by the internecine feuds which their quarrelsome nature led them to wage among them- selves. The domination of the hominidae was finally terminated by their discovery of how to release the forces locked up in the atom, a discovery which they speedily used to destroy themselves altogether. The extermination of this noxious species through their own innate destructiveness has often been invoked by our theologians as affording one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the providential governance of the universe. Human nature, we say, does not change, and man is ertainly no worse than he used to be. He is still undamentally the same silly, vainglorious, credulous, im- nilsive creature, capable of supreme heroisms and incom- mrablc meannegses, that he was in the Stone Age. What hen has happened? How comes it that our thinkers are riven in their gloomier moments to take so pessimistic view of the future? The answer in a nutshell is that mu has forsaken philosophy, or, if you like, religion, for eience. As a consequence his mechanical skill has enor- musly outstripped his social wisdom. A mechanic by he roadside mending the carburettor of a motor-car is ehaving like a superman; the same mechanic driving CU minutes later in a little hell of dust and stench, lahle to see the country himself and obscuring the ision of his fellows, is behaving like an imbecile. The hour of half a dozen men of genius, of hundreds of lented investigators, has gone to creating and perfecting le miracle of wireless broadcasting; the miracle is rgely used (by the express desire of the public) to dis- minate negroid music and the tattle of the servant's halt Science does not alter man's desires; it only enables in to gratify them; it does not cause him to want Rerent kinds of things; it only helps him to get more the kinds of things he wants. If the things he wants are od, this added capacity for achieving them is good; if eY are harmful, it too is harmful, in that it brings them ithin his reach. Until, therefore, our knowledge of how use our powers has increased in proportion as our 'rem have increased, each fresh advance in the applica- of science to practical affairs will be fraught with
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