th? Sit down by the
fire and we will talk it over, and you will see that you have nothing to
fear. What the Birmingham manufacturer designed this bit of steel for
was his affair, not mine. When it comes to design, two can play at that
game. What I use this for, you shall presently see."

Now, here we have the gist of the matter. Most of the gloomy
prognostications which distress us arise from the habit of attributing
to the thing a power for good or evil which belongs only to the person.
It is one of the earliest forms of superstition. The anthropologist
calls it "fetichism" when he finds it among primitive peoples. When the
same notion is propounded by advanced thinkers, we call it "advanced
thought." We attribute to the Thing a malignant purpose and an
irresistible potency, and we crouch before it as if it were our master.
When the Thing is set going, we observe its direction with awe-struck
resignation, just as people once drew omens from the flight of birds.
What are we that we should interfere with the Tendencies of Things?

The author of "The Wisdom of Solomon" gives a vivid picture of the
terror of the Egyptians when they were "shut up in their houses, the
prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night,
they lay there exiled from eternal providence." Everything seemed to
them to have a malign purpose. "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a
melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing
fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast
down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a
roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the
hollow mountains; these things made them swoon for fear." For, says the
author, "fear is nothing else than a betraying of the succours that
reason offers."

We have pretty generally risen above the primitive forms of this
superstition. We do not fear that a rock or tree will go out of its way
to harm us. We are not troubled by the suspicion that some busybody of
a planet is only waiting its chance to do us an ill turn. We are
inclined to take the dark of the moon with equanimity.

But when it comes to moral questions we are still dominated by the idea
of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it possible
to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without looking at
some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We personify our
tools and machines,