Excerpt from The Book of Self
The Twentieth Century may be known later as a great religious epoch. The Nineteenth Century is now seen as a period of gestation, stormy with a passionate unbelief and tragic with its gropings. The creeds of the world, riding the previous eras on diverse currents, were all shipwrecked on the rocks of Science. They went down before the Machine and the Laboratory.
For suddenly the body of man, hitherto only strong in destruction, became massive with creative power. Man's body is just as large as his tools, for a tool is merely an extension of muscle and bone: a wheel is a swifter foot, a derrick a greater hand. So, as it were, overnight, in the early part of the century, the race found itself with a new gigantic body. It was as if all the Past - a truly great and wise Mother - had given birth to this huge babe. And through this birth the race had to suffer that humiliation and helplessness which is the fate of life new-born.