Page 122 - English Class 07

I

At first sight, it might seem as if modern human beings who spend so much time getting
help from machines are very lazy. For what are the machines, but to save people from
trouble? They are extra limbs which men have made outside themselves to do their work

for them. Cranes and lifts are extra arms to do the job of lifting, trains and motors are extra
legs to do the job of walking and running. And yet it is difficult to suppose that men would
have gone to all the bother of inventing these complicated machines to serve as their extra
limbs merely because they were lazy; that they would have taken all this trouble merely to
save themselves from trouble. And in fact man is not at all lazy; he is the most restless and

energetic of all living creatures. energetic : active
Why is it, then, that we have gone to the trouble of inventing so many devices for saving

ourselves the labour of lifting and carrying and walking and remembering? The only answer
seems to be that these things bore us; they are not the things we really want to do and so
we get the machines to do them for us, in order that we may have time and energy for
other things we really want to do. What things?

I cannot answer this question without saying something about the bad parts of our
civilisation. But, it would not be fair to do this without first praising it for its good parts.

What are they?
First and foremost, they are order and safety. If today I have a quarrel with another man,

I do not get beaten merely because I am physically weaker and he can knock me down. I go
to law, and the law will decide as fairly as it can between the two of us. Thus, in disputes,
right has taken the place of might. Moreover, the law protects me from robbery and
violence. Nobody may come and break into my house, steal my goods or run off with my

children. Of course, there are burglars and the
law punishes them whenever it catches them. What is civilisa on?

It is difficult for us to realize how much
this safety means. Without safety those
higher activities of mankind that make
up civilisation could not go on. The

inventor could not invent, the scientist
could not find out and the artist could
not make beautiful things. Hence,
order and safety, although they are

not themselves civilisation, are
things without which civilisation
would be impossible. They are as

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