Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/365

 THE MODERN MIND 347

of supplement to his body. The machine is an apparatus which serves more than one important function the most notable of which, from our point of view, is that it taps cos mic energy, which it brings into the service of man to do his will under the direction of his intelligence. It is an organ ization of material things for controlling the forces before which men once stood in impotent awe. It is a method of taming heat, light, steam, electricity, gravitation; and as more occult realms of natural energy are opened up it sub dues them also to human purposes. There is no apparent limit to this process; but, generally speaking, with this ad vancing conquest of nature the appliances through which its forces are trained to human service become more elab orately complex. Between the directing mind and the end at which it aims is interposed an ever longer and more intri cate series of mechanical means; until the human intel ligence seems almost dwarfed by the very vastness of the material organization it has invented.

Turning now from the consideration of the artificial en vironment which men have built up around themselves, let us think of the multiplicity of the human contacts in the city. One is continually rubbing against one s fellowmen. The relationships and contacts get to be so numerous that many of them become to a large extent habitual. The con sciousness attending them is not vivid or intense. Many of them come only within the fringe of consciousness. This is a merciful provision, for the economy of our vital energy life in the city would be intolerable, impossible, indeed, if it were not so. Nevertheless, the whole field of attention of the dweller in the city is usually filled with these human contacts and relations. Their multiplicity and importance, the inevitable and urgent character of many of them, render it necessary to the preservation and promotion of life that they occupy prevailingly the foreground of one s conscious ness. It is men, men, men! Turn where we will, we see them ; or if we do not at the moment see them, we see the work of their hands or we hear the sounds of their activities.

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