Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/128

 What is the ideal for all kinds of moving things? It is to have a perfect power of stopping or controlling the movement. That is true in all work—and in conduct. It is true in mechanics and in morals. In work it was for ages the hand that was the great controlling agent—and almost the only one. But the hand cannot be in many places at once. It cannot be active and controlling many things at once. And so the power of man, though very beautiful in work, was also very restricted. It was also very uncertain. This did not matter so much when one was dealing with inert things, with wood that lay still on the bench, and metals that were under the power of the moulder every moment. But when motor power itself was projected, it was a very different matter. To give oneself up to the mercy of steam is not a thing that even the most confiding would care to do.

Our fathers did not give themselves up entirely even to wind and tide. At first, as we have seen, they were so wary of the sea that they went afloat only in fair weather. Later they coaxed it, as it were, with sail and oar. The miller, too, risking less, took favours from wind and wave, and was thankful. That was the age of complete force-closure, as it is called in mechanics—an age when humanity still