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of labourers, deprived of the advantages of intelligent labour,
go on working long and usefully, but sooner or later their force
inerte is used up.
“The engineer, on the other hand, who leaves the machine
he was set to manage, may go on for a long while dreaming
and constructing clever theories, finding satisfaction in his
works of genius, but at last he must die of want and hunger,
unless he returns to the machine that produces the things
needful for the sustenance of life. So we see the so-called
intelligent classes engrossed in their brilliant theories, that
float in the air like balloons without ballast. But the decisive
crisis is approaching. ‘The kingdom which is divided against
itself, &c.’ The kingdom is man, the engineer is his reason,
the engine his physical body. Through the division of these
elements in his nature, the individual man must perish, and so,
also, must the society that consists of individuals so divided.
This is the state of things at the present time. With one
class of men reason is dead and inert; with the other, the
bodily organs have become unable to be used for their purpose,
and these men have become unproductive dreamers.”
“But your analogy is not quite exact,” I interrupted. “Your
opponents themselves, the dreamers, assert that they are the
engineers of humanity, and look on the physical workers as
machines. According to them, this is one of the first principles
of the division of labour, and is of axiomatic force in their
eyes.”
“Wait a little; I will soon explain further. I know that all
comparisons are defective; every figure illustrates only a part
of the truth. We know, well enough, that a small minority
exert themselves as ‘engineers’ over all the rest, whom they
manipulate as machines at their pleasure, but that this should
have the force of an axiom is absurd. My comparison is
defective, for in the case under discussion the machine and the
engineer cannot be separated. I wanted to enforce the idea,
by means of this figure, that the engineer must not be set over
the machine except in one and the same organism. It is only
when their mutual work is free and natural that they can fulfil
their true ends; apart, they will never succeed. Mutual and
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