“On the Part Played by Philosophy in the Progress of Man”, 1920 (; backlinks):
[from Moral letters to Lucilius, v2] …Up to this point I agree with Posidonius; but that philosophy discovered the arts of which life makes use in its daily round I refuse to admit. Nor will I ascribe to it an artisan’s glory.
…How, I ask, can you consistently admire both Diogenes and Daedalus? Which of these two seems to you a wise man…In these our own times, which man, pray, do you deem the wiser—the one who invents a process for spraying saffron perfumes to a tremendous height from hidden pipes, who fills or empties canals by a sudden rush of waters, who so cleverly constructs a dining-room with a ceiling of movable panels that it presents one pattern after another, the roof changing as often as the courses—or the one who proves to others, as well as to himself, that nature has laid upon us no stern and difficult law when she tells us that we can live without the marble-cutter and the engineer, that we can clothe ourselves without traffic in silk fabrics, that we can have everything that is indispensable to our use, provided only that we are content with what the earth has placed on its surface?
…This trade [farming] also, he declares, is the creation of the wise—just as if cultivators of the soil were not even at the present day discovering countless new methods of increasing the soil’s fertility!…these early inventions were thought out by no other class of men than those who have them in charge today.
We know that certain devices have come to light only within our own memory—such as the use of windows which admit the clear light through transparent tiles, and such as the vaulted baths, with pipes let into their walls for the purpose of diffusing the heat which maintains an even temperature in their lowest as well as in their highest spaces. Why need I mention the marble with which our temples and our private houses are resplendent? Or the rounded and polished masses of stone by means of which we erect colonnades and buildings roomy enough for nations? Or our signs for whole words [shorthand?], which enable us to take down a speech, however rapidly uttered, matching speed of tongue by speed of hand?
All this sort of thing has been devised by the lowest grade of slaves. Wisdom’s seat is higher; she trains not the hands, but is mistress of our minds.