Were they really Cogs and Wheels?
Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do to think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs and wheels in an economic machine.
Then it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon the economic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had been awed and terrific—and had been swept away with it into the Whirling Unbelief.
Then I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years before it. I watched it Go Round.
I then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me like an economic machine was not an economic machine at all.
The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but it is not an economic machine.
It is a biological engine.
It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the machinery in it.
The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical parts. They are the very biological parts.
The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very much difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practical matter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to understand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it.