Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/340/en

An example of how thoroughly the power of inertia was the enemy of every innovation is shown, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by the attempt to introduce the seed drill into the highly developed agricultural culture of Flanders. This attempt failed at first; the farmers felt instinctively that this proposal was a breach in the spiritual-moral self-understanding of the farmer, who entrusted the seed to the broken-open earth with measured step and rhythmic swing, and who at the same time gave this event his blessing in bearing of soul and spirit. How different the designer of the seed drill, who, coming from outside, from the city, takes the act of sowing apart into its functions by way of conceptual abstraction. Out of this he constructs a machine that must fulfill the following functions: to deposit a definite quantity of seed of a definite grain size, in a definite unit of time, at a definite depth in the soil, and to cover it with earth.