[96] Here we can now define clearly the limits of man's creativity^a. He can produce into actuality something which is potentially already given in the world as it is given to him. Another consideration about technology^b and man is the LIBERATING power of technology. Technology liberates man in many respects. The first is: it liberates him from the limits of his temporal and spatial finitude--not altogether, certainly, but to a large extent. And what has happened only since my own childhood in this respect, in the last half century, is incredible, about overcoming the limits of time and space. But now let me here make an anticipatory footnote following the question about progress^c. Here we see where progress can force upon us by ourselves, namely by railway, airplane, telegraphy, etc.: they have conquered distance in space^d, and distance in time^e--which is needed in order to overcome this space--to a tremendous degree. In this way they have united mankind, technically, again to such a degree that mankind is REALLY now a unity in which what happens in the remotest tribe-movement in inner Africa, or wherever it may be, has repercussions in all centers of the world. Is that progress? Now it has produced the LARGEST gap bew [sic.] between mankind universally, which has ever existed. It has produced a telluric schizophrenia, a split mind, on a worldwide scale, or earth-wide. This was the answer. And it is very interesting for future historians: the technical union of the world occurred most speedily in connection with two world wars--and has made them possible. That is one thing. Second: The liberating power of technology^f with respect to human work--and that is perhaps the greatest part of it. We all still have to perform mechanical functions all the time, using tools and becoming tools ourselves in a merely mechanical way--carrying things, etc. In former centuries and millennia, ALL work was done by human bodies pressed into mechanical functions. Therefore most of these cultures, which have produced miracles of the world, [such] as the Pyramids, were slave-states. There had to be a large amount of human bodies--I say "bodies" intentionally-- which could be used for mechanical purposes in such a way that the mechanical means were identical with the human bodies. Now there is an element of justification in giving mechanical tasks to all of you, to our children, because our body is constructed in such a way that some mechanical tasks are needed in order to keep it alive. But what was done in these cultures was actually the destruction of bodies and souls of man. The bodies as tools were slowly broken down and died very early, and the souls were never able to experience the creative freedom which the few COULD experience at whom we are looking now as representatives of great culture. Here obviously the technical progress has produced possibilities for human liberation which are immense. And there are always realms still left. And if today the center of the discussion is taken by the concept of automation, we must first consider this NOT from