Civilization and Its Discontents

Answers

• Q38EXTENSION

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

  Yes. with reservations. With his auxiliary organs man has become 'a kind of prosthetic God', but the organs have not grown onto him, give him trouble, and have not made him happy.

  Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever seemed unattainable to his desires—or forbidden to him—he attributed to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble at times. However, he is entitled to console himself with the thought that this evolution will not come to an end in A.D. 1930. Future ages will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable now, and will increase man’s likeness to a god still more. But with the aim of our study in mind, we will not forget, all the same, that the human being of to-day is not happy with all his likeness to a god.

  Chapter III · Projekt Gutenberg-DE chapter 3 page; English quotations from Stephen Hicks PDF of the text and Wikipedia.