inanimate -
nature, as people used to call it - as one thing, and mankind as another. It was
natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make nature
their slave, since they thought nature was something outside them.«
    »Surely,« said Morsom; »and they were puzzled as to what to do, till they
found the feeling against a mechanical life, which had begun before the Great
Change amongst people who had leisure to think of such things, was spreading
insensibly; till at last under the guise of pleasure that was not supposed to be
work, work that was pleasure began to push out the mechanical toil, which they
had once hoped at the best to reduce to narrow limits indeed, but never to get
rid of; and which, moreover, they found they could not limit as they had hoped
to do.«
    »When did this new revolution gather head?« said I.
    »In the half-century that followed the Great Change,« said Morsom, »it began
to be noteworthy; machine after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse
that the machines could not produce works of art, and that works of art were
more and more called for. Look here,« he said, »here are some of the works of
that time - rough and unskilful in handiwork, but solid and showing some sense
of pleasure in the making.«
    »They are very curious,« said I, taking up a piece of pottery from amongst
the specimens which the antiquary was showing us; »not a bit like the work of
either savages or barbarians, and yet with what would once have been called a
hatred of civilisation impressed upon them.«
    »Yes,« said Morsom, »you must not look for delicacy there: in that period
you could only have got that from a man who was practically a slave. But now,
you see,« said he, leading me on a little, »we have learned the trick of
handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement of workmanship to the freedom
of fancy and imagination.«
    I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness and abundance of beauty of the
work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the
satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as
work fit for the best of the race. I mused silently; but at last I said:
    »What is to come after this?«
    The old man laughed. »I don't know,« said he; »we