The more perfect or poetic he makes his machines
the more spiritual they become. His utmost machines are electric.
Electricity is the modern man's prophet. It sums up his world. It has
the modern man's temperament--the passion of being invisible and
irresistible.

IV. Poetry and religion consist--at bottom, in being proud of God.
Most men to-day are worshipping God--at least in secret, not merely
because of this great Machine that He has made, running softly above
us--moonlight and starlight ... but because He has made a Machine that
can make machines, a machine that shall take more of the dust of the
earth and of the vapor of heaven and crowd it into steel and iron and
say "Go ye now,--depths of the earth, heights of heaven--serve ye me!
Stones and mists, winds and waters and thunder--the spirit that is in
thee is my spirit. I also, even I also am God!"

V. Everything has its language and the power of feeling what a thing
means, by the way it looks, is a matter of noticing, of learning the
language. The language of the machines is there. I cannot precisely
know whether the machines are expressing their ideas or not. I only
know that when I stand before a foundry hammering out the floors of
the world, clashing its awful cymbals against the night, I lift my
soul to it, and in some way--I know not how, while it sings to me, I
grow strong and glad.

PART THREE

THE MACHINES AS POETS

I. II. Machinery has poetry in it because it expresses the soul of
man--of a whole world of men.

It has poetry in it because it expresses the individual soul of the
individual man who creates the Machine--the inventor, and the man who
lives with the machine--the engineer.

It has poetry in it because it expresses God. He is the kind of God
who can make men who can make machines.

III. IV. Machinery has poetry in it because in expressing the man's
soul it expresses the greatest idea that the soul of man can have--the
man's sense of being related to the Infinite. It has poetry in it not
merely because it makes the man think he is infinite but because it is
making the man as infinite as he thinks he is. When I hear the
machines, I hear Man saying, "God and I."

V. Machinery has poetry in it because in expressing the infinity of
man it expresses the two great immeasurable ideas of poetry and of the
imagination and of the soul in all ages--the two forms of
infinity--the liberty and the unity of man.

The substance of a beautiful t