Hephestus

Hephestus by E.E. Fournier d'Albe

Hephestus presents human civilization as the outcome of inventions that allowed humanity to escape the hardships, disease, fear, and limitations of savagery. The first decisive invention was the weapon or tool: by picking up a stone, shaping a wedge, and later making spears, arrows, swords, and hammers, man extended his body beyond its natural claws, teeth, and muscles. A tool in active use becomes, in effect, a detachable limb, animated by the purpose and “soul” of its user. Every machine likewise embodies a human purpose; machinery is therefore not the negation of mind but one of its highest expressions. The discovery and control of fire marks an even greater departure from animal life. Through the figure of Hephestus, god of fire, metalwork, and useful craft, the work treats fire as the force that enabled mankind to control heat, light, cooking, pottery, and eventually bronze and iron. Fire releases stored solar energy, makes new materials possible, and permits humans to inhabit climates beyond their original conditions. Hephestus, unlike warlike or inert gods, represents inventive skill, kindness, humour, and the peaceful arts, though his gifts can also produce weapons. The development of the six simple machines, especially the wedge and the wheel, expanded human power without altering the human organism. Steam power, engines, pulleys, factories, railways, printing, and modern transport then transformed this ancient tendency into the Mechanical Age. The author rejects the belief that living beings can be explained as mere machines: machines themselves require design, purpose, and an originating mind. Their “souls” are the psychical intentions embodied in them. Human progress is described as the advance of a vast army. Pathfinders—explorers, inventors, and discoverers—open new routes; commanders and organizers distribute and coordinate their discoveries; the rank and file carry out established work; stragglers live apart from the organized community; and vultures prey on society through monopoly, usury, or exploitation. Progress depends chiefly on original discoverers and capable organizers, though entrenched interests may obstruct invention and prevent society from receiving its benefits. The work celebrates explorers, mathematicians, chemists, inventors, engineers, capitalists, trade-union leaders, and other organizers as heirs of Hephestus. Ancient navigators, Archimedes, gunpowder, optical instruments, coal, steam, and industrial production are presented as stages in humanity’s growing command over nature. Railways and locomotives are not violations of beauty but visible forms of a higher collective will: organized beings with bodies of rails, stations, bridges, engines, and personnel, and with purposes, memory, and self-maintenance. Modern machinery is said to bind humanity together, carry city children to health-giving country and seaside air, connect farmers with town dwellers, spread music and education, fight disease, and make former luxuries common possessions. Smoke, monotony, war, and misuse of power are acknowledged, but are treated as problems to be corrected by further invention and better organization rather than reasons to reject machinery. Destruction in war is judged small beside the constructive and reparative powers of civilization. As human beings extend themselves through boats, bicycles, telescopes, engines, guns, transport, and communication, they become less confined by their original bodies. Cheap production can democratize travel, security, knowledge, and pleasure, though new desires will always arise beyond what has already been made common. Humanity will continue to need restless pathfinders, organizers, and workers suited to different kinds of activity. The final vision is of mankind becoming an increasingly unified planetary organism. Transport and communication act as its circulation and nerves; invention frees many people from drudgery and enlarges intellectual and artistic life. Though history contains setbacks and societies remain vulnerable to illness and conflict, the author sees no ultimate retreat from science, fire, machinery, and organized progress. Under the aegis of Hephestus, humanity transforms the earth and builds a super-natural form of life whose eventual power and perfection are imagined as divine.

By E.E. Fournier d'Albe · First published 1912 · Genre: Philosophical Essay, Philosophy of Technology, Social Philosophy · 4 chapters · 9,924 words

First lines

Ethnologists believe that the metamorphosis from beast-like savage to cultured civilian may be proximately explained as the result of accumulated changes that found their initial impulses in a half-a-dozen or so of practical inventions.

An Irish poet, disconsolately walking along Fleet Street one day, bethought himself of a small island in an Irish lake, where he could escape from the noise and bustle of the London streets. He wrote a lovely poem embodying that thought, a poem expressing the longing of every sensitive soul to retire within itself for a time and reconstruct its world from within instead of having it impressed from without.

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industrial civilization · technology and progress · invention · machinery · fire · tools and weapons · Greek mythology · Prometheus · ancient craftsmanship · Hephaestus as smith-god · mechanical age · steam power

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