en. A queer fancy seems to be
current that a fire exists to warm people. It exists to warm people, to
light their darkness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins,
to air their rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their
children, to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their
hurried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man's house and that
hearth for which, as the great heathens said, a man should die.

Now it is the great mark of our modernity that people are always
proposing substitutes for these old things; and these substitutes always
answer one purpose where the old thing answered ten. The modern man
will wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with
a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even
boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have
my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about
hot water pipes even for heat. But when we think of all those other
requirements that these institutions answered, there opens before us the
whole horrible harlequinade of our civilization. We see as in a vision a
world where a man tries to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener; where
a man must learn single-stick with a cigarette; where a man must try to
toast muffins at electric lamps, and see red and golden castles in the
surface of hot water pipes.

The principle of which I speak can be seen everywhere in a comparison
between the ancient and universal things and the modern and specialist
things. The object of a theodolite is to lie level; the object of a
stick is to swing loose at any angle; to whirl like the very wheel of
liberty. The object of a lancet is to lance; when used for slashing,
gashing, ripping, lopping off heads and limbs, it is a disappointing
instrument. The object of an electric light is merely to light (a
despicable modesty); and the object of an asbestos stove... I wonder
what is the object of an asbestos stove? If a man found a coil of rope
in a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done
with a coil of rope; and some of them might even be practical. He could
tow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat's-cradle, or pick oakum.
He could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her
boxes for a travelling maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he
could hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller
who should find a telephone