Sartor Resartus

Answers

• Q38EXTENSION

  When a person accomplishes something through a machine, should the machine's power count as that person's capability?

  Yes. Man is weak in himself but a tool-using animal: 'without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.'

  'But, on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 'Man is a Tool-using Animal ( Handthierendes Thier ). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools: without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all.' Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best?

  Book I, Chapter V, The World in Clothes · Opened Wikisource chapter and confirmed the quotation. Serialized in Fraser's Magazine 1833-34; first book edition 1836 (Boston).