rthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere
conservatives or mere radicals.

One set says, "People cannot be converted so we will blow them up."

The other set says, "We are going to be blown up, so let us put on
Plaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lord
in Portland Cement."

Both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point.

They do not believe in Conversion.

If the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid
that they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicals
believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel
obliged to resort to Explosives.

In our machine civilization to these two great standard classes of
scared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class--the
people who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, who
have modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They have
substituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of Whirling
Unbelief, called machinery.

They admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced
concrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arc
whirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine.

I would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief.

There was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously.

I looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and the
most terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine that
mocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look pathetic
and ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heard
it or seemed to hear it--this Economic Machine closing in around my
life, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of
civilization.

I said I will love every machine that runs except the Economic
Machine--the machine for making people into machines.

But one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a little
longer than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarse
mocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, I
reflected on my experiences. I began to notice things.

I noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged about
people, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels.

Were they really Cogs and Wheels?

Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do
to think of p