THE
HUMAN MACHINE
BY
ARNOLD BENNETT
First Published November 1908
Second Edition September 1910
Third Edition April 1911
Fourth Edition August 1912
Fifth Edition January 1913
Sixth Edition August 1913
CONTENTS
- TAKING ONESELF FOR GRANTED
- AMATEURS IN THE ART OF LIVING
- THE BRAIN AS A GENTLEMAN-AT-LARGE
- THE FIRST PRACTICAL STEP
- HABIT-FORMING BY CONCENTRATION
- LORD OVER THE NODDLE
- WHAT 'LIVING' CHIEFLY IS
- THE DAILY FRICTION
- 'FIRE!'
- MISCHIEVOUSLY OVERWORKING IT
- AN INTERLUDE
- AN INTEREST IN LIFE
- SUCCESS AND FAILURE
- A MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT
- L.S.D.
- REASON, REASON!
I
TAKING ONESELF FOR GRANTED
There are men who are capable of lovinga machine more deeply than they canlove a woman. They are among thehappiest men on earth. This is not asneer meanly shot from cover at women.It is simply a statement of notorious fact.Men who worry themselves to distractionover the perfecting of a machine areindubitably blessed beyond their kind.Most of us have known such men. Yesterdaythey were constructing motorcars.But to-day aeroplanes are in theair—or, at any rate, they ought to be,according to the inventors. Watch theinventors. Invention is not usually theirprincipal business. They must invent intheir spare time. They must inventbefore breakfast, invent in the Strandbetween Lyons's and the office, inventafter dinner, invent on Sundays. Seewith what ardour they rush home of anight! See how they seize a half-holiday,like hungry dogs a bone! They don'twant golf, bridge, limericks, novels, illustratedmagazines, clubs, whisky, starting-prices,hints about neckties, politicalmeetings, yarns, comic songs, anturicsalts, nor the smiles that are situatebetween a gay corsage and a picture hat.They never wonder, at a loss, what theywill do next. Their evenings never drag—arealways too short. You may, indeed,catch them at twelve o'clock atnight on the flat of their backs; but notin bed! No, in a shed, under a machine,holding a candle (whose paths drop fatness)up to the connecting-rod that isstrained, or the wheel that is out ofcentre. They are continually interested,nay, enthralled. They have a machine,and they are perfecting it. They get onepart right, and then another goes wrong;and they get that right, and then anothergoes wrong, and so on. When they arequite sure they have reached perfection,forth issues the machine out of the shed—andin five minutes is smashed up,together with a limb or so of the inventors,just because they had been quitesure too soon. Then the whole businessstarts again. They do not give up—thatparticular wreck was, of course, dueto a mere ov