Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/126

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CHAPTER VII

THE PROJECTION OF MOVEMENT, OR MOTOR POWER

WE come now to the projection, not of a hand merely, or even of a fist, but of muscle and movement.

Certainly the fist will not be forgotten! At Krupp's works in Essen there is a hammer head that could literally crush a mountain. There are iron arms to-day that can laugh at storms, steel hands that can tear the rocks. The originals of these were not very powerful, and yet there is nothing so hard and unyielding that they cannot rend it. And they can thread a hair and sheer an invisible thread. How did all this begin?

It began long ago, for long ago people must have wanted, not only to strike, cut, and carry, but also to lift and to draw.

They wanted levers.

So we have now to consider a kind of projection that has gone on for ages, and then after ages halted,

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