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, subgenera, 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 a 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 its 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 make 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?”
Here 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.[6]
“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.