IMPROVED MACHINERY. 465 



prepared for food, where, under the rude system of the aborigines 

 of the country, the cultivation of only one could be carried on, 

 and its produce secured. Indeed, all such comparisons seem 

 idle, because, without machinery of some kind, no cultivation 

 whatever could take place. The human hand is itself a machine, 

 and one of the most perfect description. If there is any advan 

 tage in having two hands rather than one, then there must be a 

 correspondent advantage in any contrivance by which one hand 

 can be made to do the work of two, or two hands of four, and 

 still more when one can be empowered to do the work of 

 thousands. 



From the manner in which some men speak of machinery, 

 one would suppose that the world would be better and happier 

 if men and women were to go back to simple fig-leaves for 

 aprons, and undressed sheep-skins for coverings, and find shelter 

 and repose at night under some overhanging rock, or on a bed 

 of hemlock boughs, in a wigwam of birch-bark. I have no 

 sympathy with such &quot; simple and primitive&quot; notions. I will 

 say nothing of the charms and blessedness of a state of perfect 

 innocence, because I would not offend any honest man s preju 

 dices, nor thrust my face and hands against the porcupine armor 

 of controversial theology ; but I confess I have always had some 

 misgivings as to the happiness of what poets describe as the 

 golden age, and theologians depict as the paradisiacal state, 

 when the human race had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves, 

 and to enjoy themselves in doing nothing an experiment which, 

 whenever I have tried it, I have always found extremely monot 

 onous and wearisome. Strength is to be found only in the 

 exertion of the muscles ; food yields its nourishment only when 

 the machinery of digestion is in full operation ; and health, 

 and power, and happiness, are compatible only with the highest 

 activity of the physical and the intellectual faculties. 



When the ignorant and vulgar, whose views do not extend 

 beyond the first immediate effects, burn factories, and break 

 threshing-mills to pieces, an enlightened and generous mind 

 would feel compassion for their ignorance and infirmity ; but 

 when minds of a different order, professing to be enlightened, 

 become, as we sometimes see them, the cavillers against im 

 proved machinery, and prate about the &quot;simplicity of the good 

 old times,&quot; when men used clam-shells for spoons y and thorns. 



