The Moral Vision
Total Involvement
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As he was racking his brain to perfect his machine,
Howe dreamt that he had been captured by a
primitive tribe and was ordered to produce an
operational sewing machine within twenty-four
hours, failing which he would be speared to death.
He tried hard, but could not accomplish it. When
the deadline was up, the tribesmen surrounded him
and raised their spears to kill him. Scared, yet still
concentrating, he observed that each spear had an
eyelet at the tip. He kept on gazing at the eyelet and
then woke up with a start: the solution was right
before him. For the machine to work, the placement
of the hole had to be neither in the middle nor at the
base, but at the tip. His lucky dream helped him, in
1845, to produce a sewing machine that would
complete 250 stitches a minute.
What is a dream? It is the result of complete
involvement. What we think about during the day,
we dream about at night. Howe succeeded in
inventing a machine only because he had engrossed
himself in it to such an extent that he came to dream
about it. Such is the case with any undertaking,
whether one wants to invent a machine or bring
about a revolution in human life. One achieves
