Machinery is our new art-form.  A man expresses himself first in his hands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his house, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and furthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in his vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers.  With telescopes for Mars-eyes for his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep and dark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world.  He is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressions of his soul.  They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal, semi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred, and as full of light or of darkness.

So I have seen the machines go swinging through the world.  Like archangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains.  We do as we will with them.  We build Winchester Cathedral all over again, on water.  We dive down with our steel wheels and nose for knowledge—­like a great Fish—­along the bottom of the sea.  We beat up our wills through the air.  We fling up, with our religion, with our faith, our bodies on the clouds.  We fly reverently and strangely, our hearts all still and happy, in the face of God!

CHAPTER V

AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON

The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, spiritual achievement of history.  The bare idea we have had of unravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own souls—­the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way with matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a poetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven.  The supreme, spiritual adventure of the world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking down and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as matter belonging to matter—­matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, just being matter.  The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the little terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already irreligious to us.  Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded scientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million little atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the Lord?

And why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, or afraid of becoming like it?