Page 125 - English Class 07

are in a fair way to become his master. Already most men spend most of their lives looking
after and waiting upon machines. And the machines are very stern masters. They must be
given petrol to drink and oil to wash with and must be kept at the right temperature. And it

they do not get their meals when they expect them, they grow sulky and refuse to work, or
burst with rage and blow up and spread run ruin and destruction all round them. So, we
have to wait upon them very attentively and do all that we can to keep them in a good
temper. Already we find it difficult either to work or play without machines, and a time may

come when they will rule us altogether, just as we rule the animals.
What are we to do with our time? On the whole, it must be admitted, we do very little.

For the most part we use our time and energy to make more and better machines, but more
and better machines will only give us still more time and still more energy, and what are we
to do with them?

The answer, I think, is that we should try to become more civilised. For the machines
themselves and the power which the machines have given us, are not civilisation but aids to
civilisation. There is nothing particularly civilised in getting into a train. Being civilised means

making and liking beautiful things, thinking freely and living rightly and maintaining justice
equally between man and man. Man has better chance today to do these things than he
ever had before; he has himself created. If he will give his time and energy which his
machines have won for him in making more beautiful things, in finding out more and more

about the universe, in removing the causes of quarrels between nations, in discovering how
to prevent poverty, then I think our civilisation would undoubtedly be the greatest, as it
would be the most lasting, that there has ever been.

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