The symbol
represented the sum of nature - the Energy of modern science -
and society believed it to be as real as X-rays; perhaps it was!
The emperors used it like gunpowder in politics; the physicians
used it like rays in medicine; the dying clung to it as the
quintessence of force, to protect them from the forces of evil on
their road to the next life.
Throughout these four centuries the empire knew that religion
disturbed economy, for even the cost of heathen incense affected
the exchanges; but no one could afford to buy or construct a
costly and complicated machine when he could hire an occult force
at trifling expense. Fetish-power was cheap and satisfactory,
down to a certain point. Turgot and Auguste Comte long ago fixed
this stage of economy as a necessary phase of social education,
and historians seem now to accept it as the only gain yet made
towards scientific history. Great numbers of educated people --
perhaps a majority -- cling to the method still, and practice it
more or less strictly; but, until quite recently, no other was
known. The only occult power at man's disposal was fetish.
Against it, no mechanical force could compete except within
narrow limits.
Outside of occult or fetish-power, the Roman world was
incredibly poor. It knew but one productive energy resembling a
modern machine -- the slave.
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