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Updated: May 11, 2025
People believed they had all they wanted of it; democracy was discredited and broken, the professors were political realists, success followed the side of mechanization, which was rightly supposed to be linked with the dynasty, and mechanization in the economic sphere drew to its side the hope of gain. Bismarck died in the midst of anxieties, but to the end he had no scruples.
In fact, where scientific thinking had done most to change the practical relations of human life, as in the mechanization of economic production, conditions had arisen which made it more difficult, not less, for men to live in a way worthy of man.
The greatness of Prussian policy since 1713 lay in its premonition and appreciation of the principle of mechanism even before it became common to all the world. Organization and improvement, the war machine and money, science, practicality and conscientiousness all this is clearly mechanization seen from the political side.
Mechanization reduced the demand for labor power in the countryside. At the same time the growth of industry, trade, commerce and "services" increased the demand for labor power in the cities. Relatively the countryside was poor while the cities were rich. The high prizes were in the cities, bright lights, crowds and the seductive excitements of seething mass life.
On the rest of the Continent, too, the movement for political mechanization was stifled, the force that stifled it being the uprising economic movement. Bismarck was aware of the untried forces that lay in the system of political mechanization. The world, as we looked at it from our Prussian window, seemed as loose and slovenly as ever, and it was so.
They have in recent years shown themselves thoroughly industrious, plastic, apt for discipline, order-loving, intelligent, practical, honourable, trustworthy, warm-hearted, prudent and helpful, and adapted beyond all expectation to the mechanization of life and industry; of their power to produce talent we know little, except perhaps in the domain of research and technique, which are less a test of creative energy than of applied knowledge and methodical assiduity.
Man collective, as well as man individual, falls into habits, and he commits to his unthinking self what was wrought out by himself as thinking and consciously choosing. This tendency to mechanization should not surprise us, for we meet with the phenomenon everywhere.
The great revolution of 1750-1970 has made two notable contributions to the institutions of western civilization. In the field of politics it has contributed the nation state. In the field of economics it has contributed industrialization with its twin sociological consequence, mechanization and urbanization. Machines and cities are the Siamese twins of the modern age.
For this is the way we develop: not the total man at once, but this year one tract of conduct is surveyed, judged, mechanized; and next year another goes through the same maturing process. Not until such mechanization has been accomplished is the conduct truly ours.
If this were unattainable, the train stopped. All are aware how large a part is played by such mechanization of conduct. Without it, life could not go on. When a man walks to the door, he does not decide where to set his foot, what shall be the length of his step, how he shall maintain his balance on the foot that is down while the other is raised. These matters were decided when he was a child.
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