From: Joseph C Fineman (jcf@world.std.com)
Date: Sun Aug 22 1999 - 17:11:34 MDT
CHAPTER 25
THE BOOK OF MACHINES -- concluded
Here followed a very long and untranslatable digression about the
different races and families of the then existing machines. The,
writer attempted to support his theory by pointing out the
similarities existing between many machines of a widely different
character, which served to show descent from a common ancestor. He
divided machines into their genera, sub-genera, species, varieties,
subvarieties, and so forth. He proved the existence of connecting
links between machines that seemed to have very little in common, and
showed that many more such links had existed, but had now perished.
He pointed out tendencies to reversion, and the presence of
rudimentary organs which existed in many machines feebly developed and
perfectly useless, yet serving to mark descent from an ancestor to
whom the function was actually useful.
I left the translation of this part of the treatise, which, by the
way, was far longer than all that I have given here, for a later
opportunity. Unfortunately, I left Erewhon before I could return to
the subject; and though I saved my translation and other papers at the
hazard of my life, I was obliged to sacrifice the original work. It
went to my heart to do so; but I thus gained ten minutes of invaluable
time, without which both Arowhena and myself must have certainly
perished.
I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise.
The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to see my tobacco-pipe; he
examined it carefully, and when he came to the little protuberance at
the bottom of the bowl he seemed much delighted, and exclaimed that it
must be rudimentary. I asked him what he meant.
`Sir,' he answered, 'this organ is identical with the rim at the
bottom of a cup; it is but another form of the same function. Its
purpose must have been to keep the heat of the pipe from marking the
table upon which it rested. You would find, if you were to look up
the history of tobacco-pipes, that in early specimens this
protuberance was of a different shape to what it is now. It will have
been broad at the bottom, and flat, so that while the pipe was being
smoked the bowl might rest upon the table without marking it. Use and
disuse must have come into play and reduced the function to its
present rudimentary condition. I should not be surprised, sir,' he
continued, `if, in the course of time, it were to become modified
still farther, and to assume the form of an ornamental leaf or scroll,
or even a butterfly, while, in some cases, it will become extinct.'
On my return to England, I looked up the point, and found that my
friend was right.
Returning, however, to the treatise, my translation recommences as
follows:--
`May we not fancy that if, in the remotest geological period, some
early form of vegetable life had been endowed with the power of
reflecting upon the dawning life of animals which was coming into
existence alongside of its own, it would have thought itself
exceedingly acute if it had surmised that animals would one day become
real vegetables? Yet would this be more mistaken than it would be on
our part to imagine that because the life of machines is a very
different one to our own, there is therefore no higher possible
development of life than ours; or that because mechanical life is a
very different thing from ours, therefore that it is not life at all?
`But I have heard it said, "granted that this is so, and that the
vapour-engine has a strength of his own, surely no one will say that
it has a will of its own?" Alas! if we look more closely, we shall
find that this does not make against the supposition that the vapour-
engine is one of the germs of a new phase of life. What is there in
this whole world, or in the worlds beyond it, which has a will of its
own? The Unknown and Unknowable only!
`A man is the resultant and exponent of all the forces that have
been brought to bear upon him, whether before his birth or afterwards.
His action at any moment depends solely upon his constitution, and on
the intensity and direction of the various agencies to which he is,
and has been, subjected. Some of these will counteract each other;
but as he is by nature, and as he has been acted on, and is now acted
on from without, so will he do, as certainly and regularly as though
he were a machine.
`We do not generally admit this, because we do not know the whole
nature of any one, nor the whole of the forces that act upon him. We
see but a part, and being thus unable to generalise human conduct,
except very roughly, we deny that it is subject to any fixed laws at
all, and ascribe much both of a man's character and actions to chance,
or luck, or fortune; but these are only words whereby we escape the
admission of our own ignorance; and a little reflection will teach us
that the most daring flight of the imagination or the most subtle
exercise of the reason is as much the thing that must arise, and the
only thing that can by any possibility arise, at the moment of its
arising, as the falling of a dead leaf when the wind shakes it from
the tree.
`For the future depends upon the present, and the present (whose
existence is only one of those minor compromises of which human life
is full -- for it lives only on sufferance of the past and future)
depends upon the past, and the past is unalterable. The only reason
why we cannot see the future as plainly as the past, is because we
know too little of the actual past and actual present; these things
are too great for us, otherwise the future, in its minutest details
would lie spread out before our eyes, and we should lose our sense of
time present by reason of the clearness with which we should see the
past and future; perhaps we should not be even able to distinguish
time at all; but that is foreign. What we do know is, that the more
the past and present are known, the more the future can be predicted;
and that no one dreams of doubting the fixity of the future in cases
where he is fully cognisant of both past and present, and has had
experience of the consequences that followed from such a past and such
a present on previous occasions. He perfectly well knows what will
happen, and will stake his whole fortune thereon.
`And this is a great blessing; for it is the foundation on which
morality and science are built. The assurance that the future is no
arbitrary and changeable thing, but that like futures will invariably
follow like presents, is the groundwork on which we lay all our plans -
- the faith on which we do every conscious action of our lives. If
this were not so we should be without a guide; we should have no
confidence in acting, and hence we should never act, for there would
be no knowing that the results which will follow now will be the same
as those which followed before.
`Who would plough or sow if he disbelieved in the fixity of the
future? Who would throw water on a blazing house if the action of
water upon fire were uncertain? Men will only do their utmost when
they feel certain that the future will discover itself against them if
their utmost has not been done. The feeling of such a certainty is a
constituent part of the sum of the forces at work upon them, and will
act most powerfully on the best and most moral men. Those who are
most firmly persuaded that the future is immutably bound up with the
present in which their work is lying, will best husband their present,
and till it with the greatest care. The future must be a lottery to
those who think that the same combinations can sometimes precede one
set of results, and sometimes another. If their belief is sincere
they will speculate instead of working: these ought to be the immoral
men; the others have the strongest spur to exertion and morality, if
their belief is a living one.
`The bearing of all this upon the machines is not immediately
apparent, but will become so presently. In the meantime I must deal
with friends who tell me that, though the future is fixed as regards
inorganic matter, and in some respects with regard to man, yet that
there are many ways in which it cannot be considered as fixed. Thus,
they say that fire applied to dry shavings, and well fed with oxygen
gas, will always produce a blaze, but that a coward brought into
contact with a terrifying object will not always result in a man
running away. Nevertheless, if there be two cowards perfectly similar
in every respect, and if they be subjected in a perfectly similar way
to two terrifying agents, which are themselves perfectly similar,
there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity in the running
away, even though a thousand years intervene between the original
combination and its being repeated.
`The apparently greater regularity in the results of chemical than
of human combinations arises from our inability to perceive the subtle
differences in human combinations -- combinations which are never
identically repeated. Fire we know, and shavings we know, but no two
men ever were or ever will be exactly alike; and the smallest
difference may change the whole conditions of the problem. Our
registry of results must be infinite before we could arrive at a full
forecast of future combinations; the wonder is that there is as much
certainty concerning human action as there is; and assuredly the older
we grow the more certain we feel as to what such and such a kind of
person will do in given circumstances; but this could never be the
case unless human conduct were under the influence of laws, with the
working of which we become more and more familiar through experience.
`If the above is sound, it follows that the regularity with which
machinery acts is no proof of the absence of vitality, or at least of
germs which may be developed into a new phase of life. At first sight
it would indeed appear that a vapour-engine cannot help going when set
upon a line of rails with the steam up and the machinery in full play;
whereas the man whose business it is to drive it can help doing so at
any moment that he pleases; so that the first has no spontaneity, and
is not possessed of any sort of free will, while the second has and
is.
`This is true up to a certain point; the driver can stop the engine
at any moment that he pleases, but he can only please to do so at
certain points which have been fixed for him by others, or in the case
of unexpected obstructions which force him to please to do so. His
pleasure is not spontaneous; there is an unseen choir of influences
around him, which makes it impossible for him to act in any other way
than one. It is known beforehand how much strength must be given to
these influences, just as it is known beforehand how much coal and
water are necessary for the vapour-engine itself; and curiously enough
it will be found that the influences brought to bear upon the driver
are of the same kind as those brought to bear upon the engine -- that
is to say, food and warmth. The driver is obedient to his masters,
because he gets food and warmth from them, and if these are withheld
or given in insufficient quantities he will cease to drive; in like
manner the engine will cease to work if it is insufficiently fed. The
only difference is, that the man is conscious about his wants, and the
engine (beyond refusing to work) does not seem to be so; but this is
temporary, and has been dealt with above.
`Accordingly, the requisite strength being given to the motives that
are to drive the driver, there has never, or hardly ever, been an
instance of a man stopping his engine through wantonness. But such a
case might occur; yes, and it might occur that the engine should break
down: but if the train is stopped from some trivial motive it will be
found either that the strength of the necessary influences has been
miscalculated, or that the man has been miscalculated, in the same way
as an engine may break down from an unsuspected flaw; but even in such
a case there will have been no spontaneity; the action will have had
its true parental causes: spontaneity is only a term for man's
ignorance of the gods.
`Is there, then, no spontaneity on the part of those who drive the
driver?'
He followed an obscure argument upon this subject, which I have
thought it best to omit. The writer resumes: -- `After all then it
comes to this, that the difference between the life of a man and that
of a machine is one rather of degree than of kind, though differences
in kind are not wanting. An animal has more provision for emergency
than a machine. The machine is less versatile; its range of action is
narrow; its strength and accuracy in its own sphere are superhuman,
but it shows badly in a dilemma; sometimes when its normal action is
disturbed, it will lose its head, and go from bad to worse like a
lunatic in a raging frenzy: but here, again, we are met by the same
consideration as before, namely, that the machines are still in their
infancy; they are mere skeletons without muscles and flesh.
`For how many emergencies is an oyster adapted? For as many as are
likely to happen to it, and no more. So are the machines; and so is
man himself. The list of casualties that daily occur to man through
his want of adaptability is probably as great as that occurring to the
machines; and every day gives them some greater provision for the
unforeseen. Let any one examine the wonderful self-regulating and
self-adjusting contrivances which are now incorporated with the vapour-
engine, let him watch the way in which it supplies itself with oil; in
which it indicates its wants to those who tend it; in which, by the
governor, it regulates its application of its own strength; let him
look at that store-house of inertia and momentum the fly-wheel, or at
the buffers on a railway carriage; let him see how those improvements
are being selected for perpetuity which contain provision against the
emergencies that may arise to harass the machines, and then let him
think of a hundred thousand years, and the accumulated progress which
they will bring unless man can be awakened to a sense of his
situation, and of the doom which he is preparing for himself.*
----------------------------------------------------------------------
*Since my return to England, I have been told that those who are
conversant about machines use many terms concerning them which show
that their vitality is here recognised, and that a collection of
expressions in use among those who attend on steam engines would be no
less startling than instructive. I am also informed, that almost all
machines have their own tricks and idiosyncrasies; that they know
their drivers and keepers, and that they will play pranks upon a
stranger. It is my intention, on a future occasion, to bring together
examples both of the expressions in common use among mechanicians, and
of any extraordinary exhibitions of mechanical sagacity and
eccentricity that I can meet with -- not as believing in the
Erewhonian Professor's theory, but from the interest of the subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
`The misery is that man has been blind so long already. In his
reliance upon the use of steam he has been betrayed into increasing
and multiplying. To withdraw steam power suddenly will not have the
effect of reducing us to the state in which we were before its
introduction; there will be a general break-up and time of anarchy
such as has never been known; it will be as though our population were
suddenly doubled, with no additional means of feeding the increased
number. The air we breathe is hardly more necessary for our animal
life than the use of any machine, on the strength of which we have
increased our numbers, is to our civilisation; it is the machines
which act upon man and make him man, as much as man who has acted upon
and made the machines; but we must choose between the alternative of
undergoing much present suffering, or seeing ourselves gradually
superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in comparison
with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves.
`Herein lies our danger. For many seem inclined to acquiesce in so
dishonourable a future. They say that although man should become to
the machines what the horse and dog are to us, yet that he will
continue to exist, and will probably be better off in a state of
domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than in his
present wild condition. We treat our domestic animals with much
kindness. We give them whatever we believe to be the best for them;
and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has increased their
happiness rather than detracted from it. In like manner there is
reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their
existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will
rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us; they will not
only require our services in the reproduction and education of their
young, but also in waiting upon them as servants; in gathering food
for them, and feeding them; in restoring them to health when they are
sick; and in either burying their dead or working up their deceased
members into new forms of mechanical existence.
`The very nature of the motive power which works the advancement of
the machines precludes the possibility of man's life being rendered
miserable as well as enslaved. Slaves are tolerably happy if they
have good masters, and the revolution will not occur in our time, nor
hardly in ten thousand years, or ten times that. Is it wise to be
uneasy about a contingency which is so remote? Man is not a
sentimental animal where his material interests are concerned, and
though here and there some ardent soul may look upon himself and curse
his fate that he was not born a vapour-engine, yet the mass of mankind
will acquiesce in any arrangement which gives them better food and
clothing at a cheaper rate, and will refrain from yielding to
unreasonable jealousy merely because there are other destinies more
glorious than their own.
`The power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change,
that man's sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely
shocked; our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by
imperceptible approaches; nor will there ever be such a clashing of
desires between man and the machines as will lead to an encounter
between them. Among themselves the machines will war eternally, but
they will still require man as the being through whose agency the
struggle will be principally conducted. In point of fact there is no
occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he
continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become
the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is
now. Is it not then both absurd and unreasonable to be envious of our
benefactors? And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we
were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely
because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves?
`With those who can argue in this way I have nothing in common. I
shrink with as much horror from believing that my race can ever be
superseded or surpassed, as I should do from believing that even at
the remotest period my ancestors were other than human beings. Could
I believe that ten hundred thousand years ago a single one of my
ancestors was another kind of being to myself, I should lose all self-
respect, and take no further pleasure or interest in life. I have the
same feeling with regard to my descendants, and believe it to be one
that will be felt so generally that the country will resolve upon
putting an immediate stop to all further mechanical progress, and upon
destroying all improvements that have been made for the last three
hundred years. I would not urge more than this. We may trust
ourselves to deal with those that remain, and though I should prefer
to have seen the destruction include another two hundred years, I am
aware of the necessity for compromising, and would so far sacrifice my
own individual convictions as to be content with three hundred. Less
than this will be insufficient.'
This was the conclusion of the attack which led to the destruction
of machinery throughout Erewhon. There was only one serious attempt
to answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as a
part of man's own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-
corporeal limbs. Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower
animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of
man's are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in
various parts of the world -- some being kept always handy for
contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away.
A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end
all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines;
and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can
manufacture.
`Observe a man digging with a spade; his right fore-arm has become
artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a joint. The handle
of the spade is like the knob at the end of the humerus; the shaft is
the additional bone, and the oblong iron plate is the new form of the
hand which enables its possessor to disturb the earth in a way to
which his original hand was unequal. Having thus modified himself,
not as other animals are modified, by circumstances over which they
have had not even the appearance of control, but having, as it were,
taken forethought and added a cubit to his stature, civilisation began
to dawn upon the race, the social good offices, the genial
companionship of friends, the art of unreason, and all those habits of
mind which most elevate man above the lower animals, in the course of
time ensued.
`Thus civilisation and mechanical progress advanced hand in hand,
each developing and being developed by the other, the earliest
accidental use of the stick having set the ball rolling, and the
prospect of advantage keeping it in motion. In fact, machines are to
be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is now
especially advancing, every past invention being an addition to the
resources of the human body. Even community of limbs is thus rendered
possible to those who have so much community of soul as to own money
enough to pay a railway fare; for a train is only a seven-leagued foot
that five hundred may own at once.'
The one serious danger which this writer apprehended was that the
machines would so equalise men's powers, and so lessen the severity of
competition, that many persons of inferior physique would escape
detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants. He
feared that the removal of the present pressure might cause a
degeneracy of the human race, and indeed that the whole body might
become purely rudimentary, the man himself being nothing but soul and
mechanism, an intelligent but passionless principle of mechanical
action.
`How greatly,' he wrote, `do we not now live with our external
limbs? We vary our physique with the seasons, with age, with
advancing or decreasing wealth. If it is wet we are furnished with an
organ commonly called an umbrella, and which is designed for the
purpose of protecting our clothes or our skins from the injurious
effects of rain. Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are
of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate
than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket-book. He becomes
more and more complex as he grows older; he will then be seen with see-
engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair: if he be a really
well-developed specimen of his race, he will be furnished with a large
box upon wheels, two horses, and a coachman.'
It was this writer who originated the custom of classifying men by
their horse-power, and who divided them into genera, species,
varieties, and subvarieties, giving them names from the hypothetical
language which expressed the number of limbs which they could command
at any moment. He showed that men became more highly and delicately
organised the more nearly they approached the summit of opulence, and
that none but millionaires possessed the full complement of limbs with
which mankind could become incorporate.
`Those mighty organisms,' he continued, `our leading bankers and
merchants, speak to their congeners through the length and breadth of
the land in a second of time; their rich and subtle souls can defy all
material impediment, whereas the souls of the poor are clogged and
hampered by matter, which sticks fast about them as treacle to the
wings of a fly, or as one struggling in a quicksand: their dull ears
must take days or weeks to hear what another would tell them from a
distance, instead of hearing it in a second as is done by the more
highly organised classes. Who shall deny that one who can tack on a
special train to his identity, and go wheresoever he will whensoever
he pleases, is more highly organised than he who, should he wish for
the same power, might wish for the wings of a bird with an equal
chance of getting them; and whose legs are his only means of
locomotion? That old philosophic enemy, matter, the inherently and
essentially evil, still hangs about the neck of the poor and strangles
him: but to the rich, matter is immaterial; the elaborate organisation
of his extra-corporeal system has freed his soul.
`This is the secret of the homage which we see rich men receive from
those who are poorer than themselves: it would be a grave error to
suppose that this deference proceeds from motives which we need be
ashamed of: it is the natural respect which all living creatures pay
to those whom they recognise as higher than themselves in the scale of
animal life, and is analogous to the veneration which a dog feels for
man. Among savage races it is deemed highly honourable to be the
possessor of a gun, and throughout all known time there has been a
feeling that those who are worth most are the worthiest.'
And so he went on at considerable length, attempting to show what
changes in the distribution of animal and vegetable life throughout
the kingdom had been caused by this and that of man's inventions, and
in what way each was connected with the moral and intellectual
development of the human species: he even allotted to some the share
which they had had in the creation and modification of man's body, and
that which they would hereafter have in its destruction; but the other
writer was considered to have the best of it, and in the end succeeded
in destroying all the inventions that had been discovered for the
preceding 271 years, a period which was agreed upon by all parties
after several years of wrangling as to whether a certain kind of
mangle which was much in use among washerwomen should be saved or no.
It was at last ruled to be dangerous, and was just excluded by the
limit of 271 years. Then came the reactionary civil wars which nearly
ruined the country, but which it would be beyond my present scope to
describe.
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