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Show in Madison. He wanted to help the people of a seemingly Utopian community which had accepted him. But something in this clockwork mentality refused to run smoothly. What did a machine mean? As an image of God's world, a machine might suggest that the world, the Creation itself, was a clockwork mechanism. And of course the first thing to remember was that machines made perfect sense. If they were properly designed, they never made a mistake and nearly never wore out, thus surpassing their creators, and suggesting the possibility that men could, with the aid of their technology, follow their dreams to perfection. Muir inscribed "All flesh is grass" on one clock he had fabricated. His father had liked that; it suggested that John was not becoming too worldly as he pursued his hobby. Yet his father also suspected that his son's interests in science, philosophy, and technology were driving him away from God. Machines were more than a hobby, The reply that Muir later remembered giving to his father's accusations rang with Ben Franklin's philosophy. If men needed to read the Bible, as his father argued, then the person who made spectacles was serving Man and God. His father replied, as he remembered, that there would "always be plenty of worldly people to make spectacles." The answer that Ben, the inventor of bifocals, had given was "That the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to His other children." Young John on the farm, nocturnal maker of machines, agreed. Perhaps modern humanism is based on the assumption young John had accepted. A trust in the goodness of machines goes |
