CIVILIZATION AND THE MACHINE PROCESS 313
among those who stand in an engineering or superviaory relation to the processea. It counts more forcibly and farthest among those who are required to exercise what may be called a mechanical discretion in the guidance of the industrial processes, who, as one might say, are required to administer the laws of causal sequence that run through material phenomena, who therefore must learn to think in the terms in which the machine processes work.' The metaphysical ground, the assumptions, on which such thinking proceeds must be such aa will hold good for the sequence of material phenomena ; that is to say, it
■ For something more than a huodred jreara put ihis change in the habits of thought of the workman has been commonly spoken of a* a deterioration or numbing of his InUtligence. But tliat seems too sweeping a characterization of the change brought on b; habituation to machine work. It is safe to saf that such habituation brings a change in the workman's habits of thought, — in the direction, method, and content of his thinking, ~~ heightening his intelligence for some pur. poses and lowering it for certain others. No doubt, on the whole, the machine's dtacipline lowers the intelligence of the workman Cor such purposes aa were rated high as marks of intelligence before the coming of the machine, but It appears likewise to heighten his intelligence for such purposes as have been brought to the front by the machine. It he la by nature scantily endowed with the aptitudes that would make him think effective!; in terms of the machine process, if be hia intellectual capacity for other things and not for this, then the training of tbe machine uiay