opposition to the middle class which sometimes brought them into something like an alliance with
the champions of the proletariat. Engels praised Carlyle, not perceiving that what Carlyle desired
was not the emancipation of wage-earners, but their subjection to the kind of masters they had had
in the Middle Ages. The Socialists welcomed industrialism, but wished to free industrial workers
from subjection to the power of employers. They were influenced by industrialism in the problems
that they considered, but not much in the ideas that they employed in the solution of their
problems.
The most important effect of machine production on the imaginative picture of the world is an
immense increase in the sense of human power. This is only an acceleration of a process which
began before the dawn of history, when men diminished their fear of wild animals by the
invention of weapons and their fear of starvation by the invention of agriculture. But the
acceleration has been so great as to produce a radically new outlook in those who wield the
powers that modern technique has created. In old days, mountains and waterfalls were natural
phenomena; now, an inconvenient mountain can be abolished and a convenient waterfall can be
created. In old days, there were deserts and fertile regions; now, the desert can, if people think it
worth while, be made to blossom like the rose, while fertile regions are turned into deserts by
insufficiently scientific optimists. In old days, peasants lived as their parents and grandparents had
lived, and believed as their parents and grandparents had believed; not all the power of the Church
could eradicate pagan ceremonies, which had to be given a Christian dress by being connected
with local saints. Now the authorities can decree what the children of peasants shall learn in
school, and can transform the mentality of agriculturists in a generation; one gathers that this has
been achieved in Russia.
There thus arises, among those who direct affairs or are in touch with those who do so, a new
belief in power: first, the power of man in his conflicts with nature, and then the power of rulers as
against the human beings whose beliefs and aspirations they seek to control by scientific
propaganda, especially education. The result is a diminution of fixity; no change seems
impossible. Nature is raw material; so is that part of the human race which does not effectively
participate in government. There are certain old conceptions which represent men's belief in the
limits of human power; of these the two chief are