Wow. I love this short story by G. Eliot, and it’s nice to find it here. Just a question, maybe you can help...
I have a translation to Spanish (not yet published), and I have a doubt with this (to me cryptic reference):
by this unerringly directed discharge operating on movements corresponding to what we call Estimates, and by necessary mechanical consequence on movements corresponding to what we call the Funds, which with a vain analogy we sometimes speak of as “sensitive.”
Do you know what she means/alludes with “Estimates” “Funds”?
BTW, My take on the origin of this story is that it is a reference to Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Vril (The Coming Race, 1871)
She starts that paragraph as a humorous updating of British Parliament to the politics of a future machine age, imaging speeches replaced by arcs of electricity in a Parliament of machines. “Estimates” is Parliamentary jargon for approved budget numbers; “Funds” are the actual pools or accounts of money, like “sinking fund” or the “government fund” for the Royal Society etc.
I am not quite sure what she means by analogy to sensitive: she is comparing “sensitive” in the animal meaning, of having electrified nerves which sense the world and which enable reactions or reflexes, to another use of the word in presumably British politics, but I don’t know of any Victorian political use of ‘sensitive’ and can’t quickly find one—even if it is used heavily in contemporary political speech to talk about particularly important or controversial things. Perhaps it was used that way back then too? Or she just thinks the word’s application is obvious even if it is not a standard jargon.
If so, then her point would seem to be that while we talk in vague metaphors about contemporary human organizations being ‘sensitive’ or having ‘nervous systems’, we flatter our incompetent, inefficient, self-propagandizing “idle parasite” organizations by ascribing much more competence to them than they deserve. In contrast, a superior future machine government would literally have nerves conducting electricity back and forth among all its constituents at the speed of light and be sensitive. The governing machines would reach out with electricity and directly adjust a budget estimate in light of new information, and then the corresponding bank accounts would automatically increase/decrease, and downstream, machines would execute their purpose without any delay or hesitation, “blind and deaf” with “no consciousness” at all, simply doing things with a superhuman rapidity and precision. (You would no more have idle parasite Parliamentary machines than you have idle parasite ‘aristocratic gears’ in a steam engine.)
Wow. I love this short story by G. Eliot, and it’s nice to find it here. Just a question, maybe you can help...
I have a translation to Spanish (not yet published), and I have a doubt with this (to me cryptic reference):
by this unerringly directed discharge operating on movements corresponding to what we call Estimates, and by necessary mechanical consequence on movements corresponding to what we call the Funds, which with a vain analogy we sometimes speak of as “sensitive.”
Do you know what she means/alludes with “Estimates” “Funds”?
BTW, My take on the origin of this story is that it is a reference to Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Vril (The Coming Race, 1871)
She starts that paragraph as a humorous updating of British Parliament to the politics of a future machine age, imaging speeches replaced by arcs of electricity in a Parliament of machines. “Estimates” is Parliamentary jargon for approved budget numbers; “Funds” are the actual pools or accounts of money, like “sinking fund” or the “government fund” for the Royal Society etc.
I am not quite sure what she means by analogy to sensitive: she is comparing “sensitive” in the animal meaning, of having electrified nerves which sense the world and which enable reactions or reflexes, to another use of the word in presumably British politics, but I don’t know of any Victorian political use of ‘sensitive’ and can’t quickly find one—even if it is used heavily in contemporary political speech to talk about particularly important or controversial things. Perhaps it was used that way back then too? Or she just thinks the word’s application is obvious even if it is not a standard jargon.
If so, then her point would seem to be that while we talk in vague metaphors about contemporary human organizations being ‘sensitive’ or having ‘nervous systems’, we flatter our incompetent, inefficient, self-propagandizing “idle parasite” organizations by ascribing much more competence to them than they deserve. In contrast, a superior future machine government would literally have nerves conducting electricity back and forth among all its constituents at the speed of light and be sensitive. The governing machines would reach out with electricity and directly adjust a budget estimate in light of new information, and then the corresponding bank accounts would automatically increase/decrease, and downstream, machines would execute their purpose without any delay or hesitation, “blind and deaf” with “no consciousness” at all, simply doing things with a superhuman rapidity and precision. (You would no more have idle parasite Parliamentary machines than you have idle parasite ‘aristocratic gears’ in a steam engine.)
Thank you very much for your comments… and clues.