ps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization.

Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever
been dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by
its elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our
world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing
Machine-Trainers.

Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men
possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men
possessed by school-machines cannot be educators.

The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet,
discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor
poet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect,
in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should
human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect
to keep very long from losing their souls?

The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is
that this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at
the machines. They blame the locomotive.

A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive,
and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the
cab.

This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up
into the cab.

First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the
other poets.

In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and
dells and love and above, the better.

Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It
is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry
must make men next.

The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough.

CHAPTER II

BELLS AND WHEELS

We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a
thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of
machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man
and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us."

A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere;
they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white
breath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the
great cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again and
again, all in chorus, _"We have served you, now, you serve us!"_

It has come to sound