Ouroboros; or, the mechanical extension of mankind

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
OUROBOROS
OR THE MECHANICAL EXTENSION OF MANKIND BY GARET GARRETT London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Ouroboros was a fabulous snake, the encircling serpent, that swallowed its own tail. It represented an infantile thought of the human mind for wish-fulfilment by magical means. Man’s heroic business was to conquer the reptile. As he did this he seized the object he most desired. He might even wish himself into solid gold.
Made and Printed in Great Britain by M. F. Robinson & Co. Ltd. at the Library Press, Lowest
OUROBOROS
One story of us is continuous. It is the story of our struggle to recapture the Garden of Eden, meaning by that a state of existence free from the doom of toil.
So long as the character of our economic life was agricultural, as it almost wholly was until a very recent time, the attack was naïve. In the file of prayers, if one is kept, the thickest, dustiest bundle is that of our supplications for plenty—miraculous plenty without worry or price. We were loth to believe that the second arrangement between God and Adam made at the gate of exit:
Cursed is the ground for thy sake;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
was forever; and for a long time afterward local weather conditions were wistfully misunderstood, as a chastisement when they were bad and a sign of relenting when they were good. It was forever. Nature’s ring was closed, never again to open for any darling fructuary.
That is to say, man’s taking from the soil is an arbitrary wage. He may increase the gross of it a little by exerting himself more: the scale he cannot alter. If tilth for the individual has been made easier somewhat and more productive by the use of wheeled implements, power tools and now airplanes to dust the orchard with insecticide, these, you must remember, represent a tremendous increase of effort by mankind at large upon the principle of limited fecundity that governs the earth.