Material power

“ But all this wonderful, this boundless, power over material laws is gained by these laws. He alters no property of matter, but he uses one property or another as he needs, and he uses one property to overpower another. ”

“ It is consequently only in the material changes wrought by this expenditure of labor power that the metaphysical substance of life—labor power—can be embodied; but in these changes of material fact it cannot but be embodied, since these are the end to which it is directed. ”

“ Material productive power is a poweful force that shackles us with money, so we must first of all reexamine material productive power, and then return to the ancient past (material productive power did surely not exist from the start) to see how things were. ”

“ So also there may be all kinds of material, but without labor they are of no available service to man.
2. But nature furnishes not only materials but also forces to aid man in his productive efforts. The more obvious and palpable of these are gravitation, especially in falling water, wind, the explosive property of gunpowder and dynamite, the expansive power of steam, magnetism, electricity, and the forces of vegetation. There are also numerous passive powers, or properties of matter which, when adapted by man, give him much advantage ”

“ If the desires are low placed, if they extend to little beyond physical comfort, and the show of riches, the immediate results of the energy will not be much more than the continual extension of man's power over material objects ”

“ In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. ”

“ You need have no such fear, for it cannot be destroyed. Are you fearful that all the silver is going to be destroyed, so that we cannot have it? Such fears are groundless, for you cannot destroy a particle of it. What is the difficulty? A want of judgment—a want of true knowledge pertaining to the earth and to the heavens, to the elements and their organization—a want of the power to master the elements, to handle them advantageously and make them useful, and devote them to our own comfort and happiness.
I frequently take the liberty to teach economy to the people. ”

“ A man should prize events and possessions as the ore in which this fine mineral is found; and he can well afford to let events and possessions, and the breath of the body go, if their value has been added to him in the shape of power. ”

“ It recognised the new conditions of English society, and gave the mercantile and manufacturing classes, with their wealth, intelligence, and energy, not only the consciousness of power, but the sense of responsibility. ”

“ Nature stamped no nobility on gold, nor made copper plebeian. This has been the work of men; and so of the distinctions among themselves, and it will not do for us to dispute the ordinance. Station is power, wealth is power; he who has neither, is but a slave ”

“ Before I pass to the consideration of what I have called the “Waste Forces of Nature”—by which I mean to designate such of the natural powers as the world of industry has thus far passed over altogether—it will be instructive for us to consider whether we are doing what we ought to do with those that are used, and whether, with all the inventions of our skilled mechanics and engineers, the actual practical results that we obtain from the various sources of power used in the industries do not fall far below what theory declares it to be possible to attain. ”

“ I trust that by the use of the term "economy" in speaking of what is observable in the works of the Creator, I shall be understood as comprehending both the avoidance of unnecessary and the exertion of all necessary power. Of the degree of necessity in any exercise of a power which we suppose to be infinite, we can only judge by what we can see. ”

“ Under these circumstances the entire source of productive power lay in the will-energies of living beings, whose bodies had to be supplied with food, clothing and housing; and to provide these, other productive powers of a similar kind were required near the same place. ”

“ It is obvious that all of these elements are indispensable to produce anything of any value, or of any use-value. His child not only directly received some of the use-values produced by him, but was initiated into all of his experiences and observations. (As we know, power, as defined in mechanics, means the ratio of work done to the time used in doing it.) ”

“ One lies in the immeasurable width and extent of that relativity between power and function, which we have seen to underlie every known production,—and conceivable possibility of ruling or moulding Nature. Now, under power we class forces such as those which hold corpuscles in cohesion, balance the orbs of heaven, or control the growth of a crystal. ”

“ We are in search of knowledge concerning forces which we cannot as yet control. From the power systems you employ, and from what I have learned of the composition of your suns and planets, I assume you have none of the metal of power, and it is a quantity of that element that is your greatest need? ”

“ In the same way we took metals and welded them, made machines; which were beasts, potent beasts, whose destiny was the same as our own. To live and develop and, developing, to turn on 124the power that enslaved them.... ”

“ No just nor advantageous deductions from any subject or fact which is worthy of a position in the world’s history, and which is capable of permanently maintaining such a position, can be arrived at, except through a complete philosophical analysis of all the elements entering into its composition. All facts as well as all chemical compounds are made up of elementary principles brought into intimate productive relations by some general power, operating by some general law of combination. ”

“ If you are a working man or woman, no matter what you do in the shop or factory, or mine, you know that there are two kinds of power used in the plant—human, or labor power, and steam, or water (or perhaps—gas explosion) power. ”

“ It overlooks the illimitable faculty of the creating Power, and disregards the great fact that such a power acts by an economy that is saving where uniformity will accomplish what is intended, that is profuse where variation is needful, and that can guide its own exertions of power, or its abstention from such exertions, by unerring wisdom, to the most varied and exact results. ”

“ Natural forces.—Such natural agencies for producing wealth are seen in the simple properties of material bodies, such as the metals or woods or grains or fruits or flowers possess. We secure these properties for our uses. Gravity, sound, heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, crystallization, even life itself, are names for certain forms of energy in nature which men are using more or less to meet their wants. ”

“ They are means for the supply of wants, which in themselves are essentially more valuable for obtaining his full share of what is appropriated, than if all the productive powers of nature were unappropriated, and if, consequently, these great elements of civilization did not exist. ”

“ The true use of the separate pieces seems to be to secure that all-important property, the greatest strength, by the least use of material; and it is done in precisely the way that men have employed for securing the same end. ”

“ The mountains, valleys, and plains, all the wealth of precious metals hid in their bosoms, all the teeming fulness of vegetable productions, and all animal existences in their endless variety are the Lord's. ”

“ You look incredulous, but let me tell you now, as a first step toward the understanding of modern conditions, that power, with all its applications of light, heat, and energy, is to-day practically exhaustless and costless, and scarcely enters as an element into mechanical calculation. ”

“ In the school in which I have been trained this is known as Materialism in the strict sense of that word, which I take to be—reasoning about the soul of man, as if its functions were simply those of material units. ”

“ Equally so does it seem this great, gleaming, confident thing of power and metal came inevitably out of the past and will lead on to still more shining, still swifter and securer monsters in the future. ”

“ In like manner, it was necessary for the preparation of the earth for man's higher uses that the struggle for material gain should take place. But are we sure that this fierce struggle is any longer necessary? ”

“ We must beware how we regard the folk of such lands mainly as hewers of wood and drawers of water, or absorbents of exported goods or producers of dividends, or their lands as mainly reservoirs of raw material. Elemental forces are at work in the world to-day, which only justice and constructive intelligence can control. ”

“ But power is the most common ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions get it in any large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first heard the stamps pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You never heard that sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air reverberates greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives a sense of power—power that crushes—as the stamps of a great mine pounding away night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it seems to you that some unearthly power is hammering the world into shape. ”

“ How shall strength [41] of materials avail against the power that gives, and indeed is, strength of materials? This, however, is but a metaphysical doubt, and as the invention has already demonstrated its practical efficiency on a small scale, there is a presumption that it may be extended to the higher degrees. ”

“ It shall be possible to compel every useful power of Nature to shape itself to the uses and purposes of men. The powers of Man, again, shall be multiplied by an appropriate distribution of the necessary branches of labour among many members, each of whom shall acquire only one branch, but acquire that one well;—these powers shall be armed with the knowledge of Nature and of Art, and with convenient implements and machinery, and thus be raised superior to every power of Nature ”

“ In the following passages, the various powers and capacities of humanity, as displayed in agriculture and art, are represented as Divine gifts. The farmer and mechanic, the designer and manufacturer, the engraver and draftsman, the worker in metals, in wood, stone, and in every sort of raw material, all accomplish their several operations in virtue of ability which God confers. ”

“ Then followed the art of modifying these qualities, so as to bring, let us say, a fibre or a thong from stiffness to pliability and so make it useful instead of almost worthless. The progress of man from downright savagery may be fairly reckoned by his advances in the power to change the qualities of foods, raiment, materials for shelter, tools, and weapons. ”

“ In all thought of consuming wealth, we must remember that power in this form is rightly used only when power in some other form results. Thus wealth is consumed, according to natural laws, either for reproducing itself in more advantageous form or for sustaining human power in form of health or wisdom or virtue. ”

“ All these, likewise, in their numberless combinations, which ages of labour and research can never exhaust, may be destined to furnish, in perpetual succession, new sources of our wealth and of our happiness. Science and knowledge are subject, in their extension and increase, to laws quite opposite to those which regulate the material world. ”

“ When time shall have revealed the future progress of our race, those laws which are now obscurely indicated, will then become distinctly apparent; and it may possibly be found that the dominion of mind over the material world advances with an ever-accelerating force. ”

“ We must not be understood to utter a word against the power, the advantages, the immense boon of machinery; but, as all things have their compensations and their penalties, so machinery, beneficent and marvelous as it is, is one means of bringing about certain unfortunate consequences, as we think may be demonstrated.
Production and consumption do not have that intimate relation to each other they once had. ”

“ Now no man, as thou knowest, can get full play for his natural gifts, nor conduct and administer government, unless he hath fit tools, and the raw material to work upon. By material I mean that which is necessary to the exercise of natural powers; thus a king's raw material and instruments of rule are a well-peopled land, and he must have men of prayer, men of war, and men of work. ”

“ The formæ of all those qualities seeming, therefore, to be within human power either to produce or to annihilate, not only did the transmutation of substances appear abstractedly possible, but the employment of the power, at our choice, for practical ends, seemed by no means hopeless. ”

“ When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence men with their naked hands could, in short space, re-create the destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the scraps of iron and steel we found along the line. ”

“ Power Not Created.—In taking up the study of this subject start with a correct understanding of the source of all power. It is inherent in all things. All we can do is to liberate it, or to put the various materials in such condition, that they will exert their forces for our uses. (See Page nine, "Energy Indestructible.") ”

“ One judges the world by himself; the other judges himself by the world.
To illustrate our meaning: the materialist, looking outward, sees that the world is made up of force-driven matter, of gas, carbon and mineral ”

“ All the marvellous results of physical effort in all the world have flowed from so simple a matter as the contraction and expansion of muscle; and the world of materials is so cunningly constructed, that, when these are moved into right position by human hands, or by some form of capital itself the result of previous human handling, the free powers of Nature do all the rest, and valuable commodities are the good outcome. ”