Surely the work done by the body is, in one way, more its true life than
its limbs and organisation are. Which is the more true life of a great
cotton factory—the bales of goods which it turns out for the world’s
wearing or the machinery whereby its ends are achieved? The manufacture
is only possible by reason of the machinery; it is produced by this. The
machinery only exists in virtue of its being capable of producing the
manufacture; it is produced for this. The machinery represents the work
done by the factory that turned it out.
Somehow or other when we think of a factory we think rather of the fabric
and mechanism than of the work, and so we think of a man’s life and
living body as constituting himself rather than of the work that the life
and living body turn out. The instinct being as strong as it is, I
suppose it sound, but it seems as though the life should be held to be
quite as much in the work itself as in the tools that produce it—and
perhaps more.