The lecturer on the French Revolution serves as a mouthpiece for the official ideology of the society in “The Machine Stops.” When respirators are abolished, making it impossible for people to visit Earth’s surface and observe it directly, he celebrates this change, giving a speech explaining why “tenth-hand” knowledge, filtered through a multitude of secondary interpretations, is truer than first-hand knowledge. When defects appear in the Machine, he counsels an attitude of patient suffering, to put up with the Machine’s flaws and have faith that they will soon be fixed, as the Machine has provided so much for them in the past. In this way, the lecturer is the direct opposite of Kuno, who questions the official ideology of his society. The lecturer instead preaches an attitude of blind faith and willful ignorance—an attitude that will eventually mark the downfall of this civilization.