MECHANISM

IN

THOUGHT AND MORALS

An Address

WITH

NOTES AND AFTERTHOUGHTS

BY

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

་་་

'Car il ne faut pas se méconnaître, nous sommes
automates autant qu'esprit.

PASCAL: Pensées, chap. xi. §

4

INTRODUCTION.

t

IT is fair to claim for this Essay the license which belongs to

all spoken Addresses. To hold the attention of an audience is the first requisite of every such composition; and for this a more highly coloured rhetoric is admissible than might please the solitary reader. The cheek of a stage

heroine will bear a touch of carmine which would hardly improve the sober comeliness of the mother of a family at her fireside.

461

RECAP

406

473

16576

So, too, on public occasions, a wide range of suggestive enquiry, meant to stimulate rather than satiate the interest of the listeners, may, with some reason, be preferred to that more complete treatment of a narrowly limited subject which is liable to prove exhaustive in a double

sense.

In the numerous notes and other additions, I have felt the right to use a freedom of expression which some might think out of place before the mixed audience of a literary anniversary. The dissentient listener may find himself in an uneasy position hard to escape from the dissatisfied reader has an easy remedy.

snatch a brief repast, and go back, refreshed, we will hope, to their places. But, while they are at the tables, one may be seen going round among the cars with a lantern and a hammer, intent upon a graver business. He is clinking the wheels to try if they are