or the highest good to prescribe flying for
quadrupeds or peace for the sea waves.

What antecedent interest does mechanical art subserve? What is the
initial and commanding ideal of life by which all industrial
developments are to be proved rational or condemned as vain? If we look
to the most sordid and instrumental of industries we see that their
purpose is to produce a foreordained result with the minimum of effort.
They serve, in a word, to cheapen commodities. But the value of such an
achievement is clearly not final; it hangs on two underlying ideals, one
demanding abundance in the things produced and the other diminution in
the toil required to produce them. At least the latter interest may in
turn be analysed further, for to diminish toil is itself no absolute
good; it is a good only when such diminution in one sphere liberates
energies which may be employed in other fields, so that the total human
accomplishment may be greater. Doubtless useful labour has its natural
limits, for if overdone any activity may impair the power of enjoying
both its fruits and its operation. Yet in so far as labour can become
spontaneous and in itself delightful it is a positive benefit; and to
its intrinsic value must be added all those possessions or useful
dispositions which it may secure. Thus one ideal--to diminish
labour--falls back into the other--to diffuse occasions for enjoyment.
The aim is not to curtail occupation but rather to render occupation
liberal by supplying it with more appropriate objects.

[Sidenote: The aim of industry is to live well.]

It is then liberal life, fostered by industry and commerce or involved
in them, that alone can justify these instrumental pursuits. Those
philosophers whose ethics is nothing but sentimental physics like to
point out that happiness arises out of work and that compulsory
activities, dutifully performed, underlie freedom. Of course matter or
force underlies everything; but rationality does not accrue to spirit
because mechanism supports it; it accrues to mechanism in so far as
spirit is thereby called into existence; so that while values derive
existence only from their causes, causes derive value only from their
results. Functions cannot be exercised until their organs exist and are
in operation, so that what is primary in the order of genesis is always
last and most dependent in the order of worth. The primary substance of
things is their mere material; their first cause i