“Tools arm the man…”

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous implements, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

—Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, known as Novalis