Lewis Lapham of the Quarterly asks if a firm distinction can be drawn between the natural and supernatural, between fantasy and technology:
What once was sorcery maybe now is science, but the wonders technological of which I find myself in full possession, among them indoor plumbing and electric light, I incline to regard as demonstrations magical.(Image: "Doctor Faustus dreams of 'profit and delight', much like many in the US", via Gallo/Getty.)
This inclination apparently is what constitutes a proof of being human, a faculty like the possession of language that distinguishes man from insect, guinea hen and ape. In the beginning was the word, and with it the powers of enchantment. I take my cue from Christopher Marlowe's tragical drama Doctor Faustus because his dreams of "profit and delight/Of power, of honour, of omnipotence", are the stuff that America is made of, as was both the consequence to be expected and the consummation devoutly to be wished when America was formed in the alembic of the Elizabethan imagination. Marlowe was present at the creation, as were William Shakespeare, the navigators Martin Frobisher and Francis Drake and the Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon, envisioning a utopian New Atlantis on the coast of Virginia.