... intangible. Electricity is his prophet. It sums him up. It sums up his modern world and the religion and the arts of his modern world. Out of all the machines that he has made the electric machine is the most modern because it is the most spiritual. The empty and futile look of a trolley wire does not trouble the modern man. It is his instinctive expression of himself. All the habits of electricity are his habits. Electricity has the modern man's temperament—the passion of being invisible and irresistible. The electric machine fills him with brotherhood and delight. ... — The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
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