“Where is the fulcrum to uplift our world and roll it forward? More and more I am convinced that it lies in intelligent digging; the building of subways by architects; the planning of subways and skyscrapers and states by workingmen.
“Curiously enough, as it is now, we do not need brains here. Yes, here in a work which at bottom is Thought and Method and Logic, most of us are required not to think or reason. Only the machines may think. I wrote of the machines as our Slaves of the Lamp, but I was wrong. We are the slaves. We must obey the machines or suffer. Our life is simply lifting. We are lifting the world and moving it. But only the machines know what we are doing. We are blindfolded. If only they did not blindfold us! If we could see the Plan and understand; if we could know and thrust and trace in our mind’s eye this little hole in the ground that writhes under Chicago; how the thrill of this Odyssey would nerve and hearten us! But no, of the end of what we are doing we can only guess vaguely. The only thing we really know is this shovelful of dirt. Or if we dream of the millions of men this hole will shoot in and out, up and down, back and forth—why will it shoot them and to whom and from what into what Great End, whither, whither?
“I could not finish this, and three days have gone. Yesterday I arose with the dawn before work and began reading. It was a revelation of joy. I was fresh and rested and the morning was bright and young. I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I am sure now that I never have read it before. I told people quite confidently that I had. I looked particularly intelligent when Hamlet was discussed or alluded to. But if this was the truth, I must have read Hamlet with tired mind and weary brain; mechanically, half comprehendingly. This morning I read as angels read, swooping with the thought, keen and happy with the inner spirit of the thing. Hamlet lived, and he and I suffered together with an all too easily comprehended hesitation at life. I shall do much reading like this. I know now what reading is. I am going to master a hundred books. Nothing common or cheap or trashy, but a hundred master thoughts. I do not believe the world holds more. These are the days of my purification that I may rise out of selfishness and hesitation and unbelief and depths of mental debauchery to the high and spiritual purity of love.
“Now I must go. I shall walk down to the morning sunlight which is soft and sweet before its midday dust and heat; others gradually will join me as I walk on. On some few faces I shall catch an answering gleam of morning, some anticipation of a great day’s work; but on most faces there will be but sodden grayness, a sort of ingrained weariness which no sleep will ever last long enough to drive away—save one sleep, and that the last.
“These faces frighten me. What is it that carves them? What makes my fellow men who work with their hands so sick of life? What ails the world of work? In itself, it is surely good; it is real; it is better than polo, baseball, or golf. It is the Thing Itself. There is beauty in its movement and in the sun shine, storm, and rain that walk beside it. Here is art. An art singularly deep and satisfying. Who does not glow at the touch of this imprisoned lightning that lies inert above the hole? We touch a bit of metal: the sullen rock gives up its soul and flies to a thousand fragments. And yet this glorious thunder of the world strikes on deaf ears and eyes that see nothing. At morning most of us are simply grim; at noon, we are dull; at night, we are automata. Even I cannot entirely escape it. I was free and joyous this morning. Tonight I shall be too tired to think or feel or plan. And after five, ten, fifteen years of this—what?
“I am trying to think through some solution. I see the Plan—our Plan, the great Emancipation—as clearly and truly as ever. I even know what we must aim at, but now the question is where to begin. It’s like trying to climb a great mountain. It takes so long to get to the foothills.
“This problem of lifting physical work to its natural level puzzles me. If only I could work and work wildly, unstintingly, hilariously for six full, long hours; after that, while I lie in a warm bath, I should like to hear Tschaikowsky’s Fourth Symphony. You know the lilt and cry of it. There must be much other music like it. Then I would like to have clean, soft clothes and fair, fresh food daintily prepared on a shining table. Afterward, a ride in green pastures and beside still waters; a film, a play, a novel, and always you. You, and long, deep arguments of the intricate, beautiful, winding ways of the world; and at last sleep, deep sleep within your arms. Then morning and the fray.
“I
