Dynamism

“ Power is stamped in his deep-set eyes and the firm lines of mouth and chin,—power which gives beauty even to an ugly thing, throwing a grandeur and dignity round a black, smoky engine, or a huge, ponderous steam-hammer. ”

“ An Age of Force followed the final subjugation of Nature. The dynamo replaced the steam-engine, radiant energy revealed the hidden secrets of matter, to the conquest of the earth was added the control of the air and the mastery of the deep. ”

“ Action, first, last, and all the time, is the great principle of life and progress. Without it the most perfect engine, gigantic in proportions and costly in equipment, is a dead thing, valueless as the formless mass of ore it once was. But that marvelous product of man's hand and brain, plus steam, becomes a veritable giant of power. ”

“ It is rather energy everywhere, the play of forces and force-waves, at the same time one and many, agglomerating here and diminishing there, a sea of forces storming and raging in itself, for ever changing, for ever rolling back over incalculable ages to recurrence, with an ebb and flow of its forms, producing the most complicated things out of the most simple structures ”

“ When one thinks of dynamite, immediately there are brought to the mind war, with all its horrors, and anarchism, with its bombs and nefarious practices; but it has been one of the greatest aids to man in his engineering triumphs. ”

“ Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.
Yet the dynamo, next to the steam-engine, was the most familiar of exhibits. For Adams’s objects its value lay chiefly in its occult mechanism. Between the dynamo in the gallery of machines and the engine-house outside, the break of continuity amounted to abysmal fracture for a historian’s objects. ”

“ These mechanical giants puffed and panted with an almost human expression, in their vigorous struggle to drag the train forward,—now and again hovering upon the very verge of inability, and then, as it seemed to us, by putting forth renewed energy and extraordinary effort, pressing forward and finally surmounting the steep way. ”

“ A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediæval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption of fuel. ”

“ De Quincey says, "The most remarkable instance of a combined movement in society which history, perhaps, will be summoned to notice, is that which, in our day, has applied itself to the abatement of intemperance. Two vast movements are hurrying into action by velocities continually accelerated,—the great revolutionary movement from political causes concurring with the great physical movement in locomotion and social intercourse from the gigantic power of steam. ”

“ Sometimes, on seizing a branch in her progress, she will throw herself, by the power of one arm only, completely round it, making a revolution with such rapidity as almost to deceive the eye, and continue her progress with undiminished velocity. ”

“ We tear into the great spaces of the future and the turbines fall to talking in unfamiliar tongues. Out to the open we go, to windy freedom and trackless ways. Light after light goes down. England and the Kingdom, Britain and the Empire, the old prides and the old devotions, glide abeam, astern, sink down upon the horizon, pass—pass. ”

“ And for my part I say that it is not only a rock, in other words, a compact and motionless force of resistance; it is a vast force, united indeed, but active, which can mingle in all great movements without being dispersed, and which grows in strength and energy by its contact with the life of the whole. ”

“ The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,—scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s-breadth further for respect of power,—while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. ”

“ And at the same time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock, sways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. This force is not a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip my bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. ”

“ The gong, and then Half Ahead!—great elbows thrust up and down, up and down; the grunt of power overcoming inertia, followed by the easy swing of limitless strength. Full Ahead!—and so off again for the great struggle—man's wits and the engines and the mercy of God against the upreaching of the sea. ”

“ Night and day the conquering engines rumbled at their distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their journey’s end, and gliding like tame dragons into the allotted corners grooved out to the inch for their reception, stood bubbling and trembling there, making the walls quake, as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers yet unsuspected in them, and strong purposes not yet achieved. ”

“ The dynamo and everything of a dynamic nature—every mechanical motor-working of forces, whether material or political, are naturally congenial to the man of the Western world—understandable by him, serviceable to him—and they are not so to the man of the East. ”

“ But there has been the other mission given to us: to accumulate, as it were, into a dynamo all the spiritual energy of the race, and that concentrated energy is to pour forth in a deluge on the world whenever circumstances are propitious. ”

“ Forces for good and forces for evil are everywhere evident, each acting with a hundred- or a thousand-fold the intensity with which it acted in former ages. Over the whole earth the swing of the pendulum grows more and more rapid, the main-spring coils and spreads at a rate constantly quickening, the whole world movement is of constantly accelerating velocity. ”

“ Force, says Marx, is the midwife of progress; force, a vast and burning upheaval from below, a strained and spasmodic pressure from the molten womb of the earth, bowed the mountain out of its deep resting place, tilted away the early sea, arched its summit high over the surrounding lowlands. ”

“ The velocity of winds, the weight of waters, and the rage of steam, are powers, each one of which is infinitely stronger than all the strength of all the nations [Pg 40] and races of mankind, were it all gathered into a single arm. And all these energies are given us on one condition,—the condition of intelligence, that is, of education. ”

“ It was to be done as all great things are done,—by the gradual and silent accumulation of power. You all know that a flywheel—heavy, very heavy on the circumference, light, very light within it—was made to save up power, from the time when it was produced to the time when it was wanted. ”

“ As the concluding laps of a race are generally marked by increased energy incident to the final spurt—the supreme effort to reach, the end in glory and triumph, as in a powerful drama, interest becomes more intense, and action more concentrated with the approach of the finale, so, in this great undertaking, the fact that the end was looming above the horizon of sight called forth redoubled energies on the part of the people. ”

“ For here were the powers of earth and air and water gathered together and harnessed in man's service, to work his will at the touch of a finger, the pressure of a foot. Fiery furnaces, compressed gases escaping, thundering pumps, prodigious flywheels, droning, buzzing, crackling dynamos—all, and a hundred others—swelled the chorus of work. ”

“ Like a General who sees the fortress looming up in the distance which he must take to complete his victory, his horse’s hoofs trampling the dead and dying in his path, so has this discoverer and inventor been unmindful of all that lay between him and his goal. Taking for the key-note of his experiments, in applying inter-molecular vapour to the running of an engine, that all the movements of elastic elements are rhythmical, he has had problems to solve which needed the full measure of inspiration he has received before he could attain that degree of success which he has now reached. ”

“ The collision of two forces, that of the revolutionary element made up of enthusiasm and red lyricism against the force of inertia and reactionary resistance of tradition. The angles are the vibratory waves of the former force in motion. ”

“ We have learned to set up one force in nature against the other. The running stream; the moving winds; the tides; the expansive force of all materials under heat, are brought into play to counteract the great prevailing agency which seeks to hold everything down to mother earth.
Utilizing Forces.—The Bible says: Blessed is he who maketh two blades of grass grow where one grew before. To do that means the utilization of forces. Improved machinery is enabling man to make many blades grow where one grew before. ”

“ The symbol was force, as a compass-needle or a triangle was force, as the mechanist might prove by losing it, and nothing could be gained by ignoring their value. Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man’s activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done; the historian’s business was to follow the track of the energy ”

“ As an observer I dare indulge in only a few of the regulars' tart sayings about one another, sayings which of themselves were symptomatic of our restless energy for achievement, and of standards which were formed on achievement rather than pretension. If there were any graft, it was that of desire for power, of travel orders to see the front and France, and of other human weaknesses which were an inevitable accompaniment of active ambition. ”

“ A DYNAMIC theory, like most theories, begins by begging the question: it defines Progress as the development and economy of Forces. Further, it defines force as anything that does, or helps to do work. Man is a force ”

“ Since Motion and Action involve the idea of Force or Power, for which the Greek word is dynamis, furnishing the English words Dynamic and Dynamics, our Philosophers have chosen the distinction Static and Dynamic, instead of Static and Motic, the true distinction, and have in that way obscured and disguised from themselves even the fundamental and all-important relationship of these two great Aspects of Being, with the two great negative Grounds or Containers of all Being ”

“ Thus they play their part, those energetic men-at-arms; and thus one great force, the force of iron, spins and expands itself, century after century, helping on, as it whirls, the great progress of society towards its goal, wherever that may be. ”

“ And yet, as it stands complete tonight with all of you here in the vigor of your life and in the enjoyment of such entertainment as you may get here this evening, I will find a dozen men who with a few pounds of dynamite will reduce it and all of us to instant destruction. ”

“ Now our spontaneous way of conceiving the effort, under all these circumstances, is as an active force adding its strength to that of the motives which ultimately prevail. When outer forces impinge upon a body, we say that the resultant motion is in the line of least resistance, or of greatest traction. ”

“ Yet the outer rim of the big generators is spinning at the pace of a hundred thousand miles an hour; the dazzling clean switch-board, with its little handles and levers, is the seat of empire over more power than the strength of a million disciplined, unquestioning men. ”

“ Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. ”

“ So long as these motives were habitual, and their attraction regular, the consequent result might, for convenience, be called movement of inertia, to distinguish it from movement caused by newer or higher attraction; but the greater the bulk to move, the greater must be the force to accelerate or deflect it. ”

“ In my case, I confess that I am so deeply interested in the whole box of tricks that it is the sample I fight shy of, and I have remained single all these years because my heart is no miserable [Pg 25] little one-horse-power affair that beats only for one single individual, but a ninety-million horse-power dynamo that whirls madly around day and night, on time and overtime, on behalf of all. ”

“ But when human ingenuity became infused into iron—when the industry and adroitness of a million of hands had been concentrated in the single arm of the Briareus of steam—the movements of the mighty prodigy became necessarily expanded in proportion to its power, and required a correspondingly enlarged field for their display. ”

“ Like the delicate mainspring of some complicated machine which sustains a pressure that would shatter a bar of iron, so this fine sensitive nature assumed the best attributes of strength, and bore up triumphantly against a world in arms. ”

“ This profession of faith contradicts the imbecile sophisms foolishly put into circulation by high authority and a thoughtless press, on the efficiency of the mass, which is nothing but numbers, on the fantastic value of new arms, which are declared sufficient for gaining a victory by simple mechanical perfection, on the suppression of individual courage. ”

“ A mighty engine of destruction or defence this—its lines extending for miles and miles—waiting there grim, dogged, resolute, to give battle to the richest, most resourceful, and determined Power in the world. ”