“ARE you serious?—do you really believe that a machine thinks?”
I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals in
the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker till
they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several
weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering
even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was
that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that
he had “something on his mind.”
Presently he said:
“What is a ‘machine’? The word has been variously defined. Here is one
definition from a popular dictionary: ‘Any instrument or organization by
which power is applied and made effective, or a desired effect produced.’
Well, then, is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks—or
thinks he thinks.”
“If you do not wish to answer my question,” I said, rather testily, “why
not say so?—all that you say is mere evasion. You know well enough that
when I say ‘machine’ I do not mean a man, but something that man has made
and controls.”
“When it does not control him,” he said, rising abruptly and looking out
of a window, whence nothing was visible in the blackness of a stormy
night. A moment later he turned about and with a smile said: “I beg your
pardon; I had no thought of evasion. I considered the dictionary man’s
unconscious testimony suggestive and worth something in the discussion.
I can give your question a direct answer easily enough: I do believe that
a machine thinks about the work that it is doing.”
That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether pleasing, for
it tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon’s devotion to study and
work in his machine-shop had not been good for him. I knew, for one
thing, that he suffered from insomnia, and that is no light affliction.
Had it affected his mind? His reply to my question seemed to me then
evidence that it had; perhaps I should think differently about it now. I
was younger then, and among the blessings that are not denied to youth is
ignorance. Incited by that great stimulant to controversy, I said:
“And what, pray, does it think with—in the absence of a brain?”
The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took his favorite
form of counter-interrogation:
“With what does a plant think—in the absence of a brain?”
“Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should be pleased to
know some of their conclusions; you may omit the premises.”
“Perhaps,” he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish irony, “you
may be able to infer their convictions from their acts. I will spare you
the familiar examples of the sensitive mimosa, the several insectivorous
flowers and those whose stamens bend down and shake their pollen upon the
entering bee in order that he may fertilize their distant mates. But
observe this. In an open spot in my garden I planted a climbing vine.
When it was barely above the surface I set a stake into the soil a yard
away. The vine at once made for it, but as it was about to reach it
after several days I removed it a few feet. The vine at once altered its
course, making an acute angle, and again made for the stake. This
manœuvre was repeated several times, but finally, as if discouraged, the
vine abandoned the pursuit and ignoring further attempts to divert it
traveled to a small tree, further away, which it climbed.
“Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly in search of
moisture. A well-known horticulturist relates that one entered an old
drain pipe and followed it until it came to a break, where a section of
the pipe had been removed to make way for a stone wall that had been
built across its course. The root left the drain and followed the wall
until it found an opening where a stone had fallen out. It crept through
and following the other side of the wall back to the drain, entered the
unexplored part and resumed its journey.”
“And all this?”
“Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the consciousness of
plants. It proves that they think.”
“Even if it did—what then? We were speaking, not of plants, but of
machines. They may be composed partly of wood—wood that has no longer
vitality—or wholly of metal. Is thought an attribute also of the mineral
kingdom?”
“How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of crystallization?”
“I do not explain them.”
“Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to deny, namely,
intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the crystals.
When soldiers form lines, or hollow squares, you call it reason. When
wild geese in flight take the form of a letter V you say instinct. When
the homogeneous atoms of a mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange
themselves into shapes mathematically perfect, or particles of frozen
moisture into the symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have
nothing to say. You have not even invented a name to conceal your heroic
unreason.”
Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness. As he paused
I heard in an adjoining room known to me as his “machine-shop,” which no
one but himself was permitted to enter, a singular thumping sound, as of
some one pounding upon a table with an open hand. Moxon heard it at the
same moment and, visibly agitated, rose and hurriedly passed into the
room whence it came. I thought it odd that any one else should be in
there, and my interest in my friend—with doubtless a touch of
unwarrantable curiosity—led me to listen intently, though, I am happy to
say, not at the keyhole. There were confused sounds, as of a struggle or
scuffle; the floor shook. I distinctly heard hard breathing and a hoarse
whisper which said “Damn you!” Then all was silent, and presently Moxon
reappeared and said, with a rather sorry smile:
“Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there that
lost its temper and cut up rough.”
Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by four
parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:
“How would it do to trim its nails?”
I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated
himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted
monologue as if nothing had occurred:
“Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man of
your reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that every
atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. _I_ do. There is no such
thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct with force,
actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in its environment
and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones residing in
such superior organisms as it may be brought into relation with, as those
of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It
absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose—more of them in
proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of its
work.
“Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer’s definition of ‘Life’? I read
it thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward, for anything I
know, but in all that time I have been unable to think of a single word
that could profitably be changed or added or removed. It seems to me not
only the best definition, but the only possible one.
“‘Life,’ he says, ‘is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes,
both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external
coexistences and sequences.’”
“That defines the phenomenon,” I said, “but gives no hint of its cause.”
“That,” he replied, “is all that any definition can do. As Mill points
out, we know nothing of cause except as an antecedent—nothing of effect
except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without
another, which is dissimilar: the first in point of time we call cause,
the second, effect. One who had many times seen a rabbit pursued by a
dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs otherwise, would think the
rabbit the cause of the dog.
“But I fear,” he added, laughing naturally enough, “that my rabbit is
leading me a long way from the track of my legitimate quarry: I’m
indulging in the pleasure of the chase for its own sake. What I want you
to observe is that in Herbert Spencer’s definition of ‘life’ the activity
of a machine is included—there is nothing in the definition that is not
applicable to it. According to this sharpest of observers and deepest of
thinkers, if a man during his period of activity is alive, so is a
machine when in operation. As an inventor and constructor of machines I
know that to be true.”
Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the fire. It was
growing late and I thought it time to be going, but somehow I did not
like the notion of leaving him in that isolated house, all alone except
for the presence of some person of whose nature my conjectures could go
no further than that it was unfriendly, perhaps malign. Leaning toward
him and looking earnestly into his eyes while making a motion with my
hand through the door of his workshop, I said:
“Moxon, whom have you in there?”
Somewhat to my surprise he laughed lightly and answered without
hesitation:
“Nobody; the incident that you have in mind was caused by my folly in
leaving a machine in action with nothing to act upon, while I undertook
the interminable task of enlightening your understanding. Do you happen
to know that Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm?”
“O bother them both!” I replied, rising and laying hold of my overcoat.
“I’m going to wish you good night; and I’ll add the hope that the machine
which you inadvertently left in action will have her gloves on the next
time you think it needful to stop her.”
Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot I left the house.
Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond the
crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along precarious plank
sidewalks and across miry, unpaved streets I could see the faint glow of
the city’s lights, but behind me nothing was visible but a single window
of Moxon’s house. It glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and
fateful meaning. I knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend’s
“machine-shop,” and I had little doubt that he had resumed the studies
interrupted by his duties as my instructor in mechanical consciousness
and the fatherhood of Rhythm. Odd, and in some degree humorous, as his
convictions seemed to me at that time, I could not wholly divest myself
of the feeling that they had some tragic relation to his life and
character—perhaps to his destiny—although I no longer entertained the
notion that they were the vagaries of a disordered mind. Whatever might
be thought of his views, his exposition of them was too logical for that.
Over and over, his last words came back to me: “Consciousness is the
creature of Rhythm.” Bald and terse as the statement was, I now found it
infinitely alluring. At each recurrence it broadened in meaning and
deepened in suggestion. Why, here, (I thought) is something upon which
to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm all
things _are_ conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is rhythmic.
I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth of his thought—the
scope of this momentous generalization; or had he arrived at his
philosophic faith by the tortuous and uncertain road of observation?
That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon’s expounding had failed to
make me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great light shone about me,
like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus; and out there in the storm and
darkness and solitude I experienced what Lewes calls “The endless variety
and excitement of philosophic thought.” I exulted in a new sense of
knowledge, a new pride of reason. My feet seemed hardly to touch the
earth; it was as if I were uplifted and borne through the air by
invisible wings.
Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now
recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about, and
almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon’s
door. I was drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort. Unable in my
excitement to find the doorbell I instinctively tried the knob. It
turned and, entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so
recently left. All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I had supposed, was in
the adjoining room—the “machine-shop.” Groping along the wall until I
found the communicating door I knocked loudly several times, but got no
response, which I attributed to the uproar outside, for the wind was
blowing a gale and dashing the rain against the thin walls in sheets.
The drumming upon the shingle roof spanning the unceiled room was loud
and incessant.
I had never been invited into the machine-shop—had, indeed, been denied
admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled metal
worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and
his habit silence. But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and
civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door. What I saw took all
philosophical speculation out of me in short order.
Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a
single candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him, his
back toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two was a
chessboard; the men were playing. I knew little of chess, but as only a
few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game was near its
close. Moxon was intensely interested—not so much, it seemed to me, in
the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed so intent a look
that, standing though I did directly in the line of his vision, I was
altogether unobserved. His face was ghastly white, and his eyes
glittered like diamonds. Of his antagonist I had only a back view, but
that was sufficient; I should not have cared to see his face.
He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions
suggesting those of a gorilla—a tremendous breadth of shoulders, thick,
short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth of black
hair and was topped with a crimson fez. A tunic of the same color,
belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat—apparently a box—upon which
he sat; his legs and feet were not seen. His left forearm appeared to
rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with his right hand, which seemed
disproportionately long.
I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway and
in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his opponent he
could have observed nothing now, except that the door was open.
Something forbade me either to enter or to retire, a feeling—I know not
how it came—that I was in the presence of an imminent tragedy and might
serve my friend by remaining. With a scarcely conscious rebellion
against the indelicacy of the act I remained.
The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making his
moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most convenient
to his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous and lacking in
precision. The response of his antagonist, while equally prompt in the
inception, was made with a slow, uniform, mechanical and, I thought,
somewhat theatrical movement of the arm, that was a sore trial to my
patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I caught
myself shuddering. But I was wet and cold.
Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly inclined
his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his king. All at
once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And then that he was
a machine—an automaton chess-player! Then I remembered that Moxon had
once spoken to me of having invented such a piece of mechanism, though I
did not understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his
talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely a
prelude to eventual exhibition of this device—only a trick to intensify
the effect of its mechanical action upon me in my ignorance of its
secret?
A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transports—my “endless variety
and excitement of philosophic thought!” I was about to retire in disgust
when something occurred to hold my curiosity. I observed a shrug of the
thing’s great shoulders, as if it were irritated: and so natural was
this—so entirely human—that in my new view of the matter it startled me.
Nor was that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply with its
clenched hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I:
he pushed his chair a little backward, as in alarm.
Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the board,
pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrow-hawk and with the
exclamation “checkmate!” rose quickly to his feet and stepped behind his
chair. The automaton sat motionless.
The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and
progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses
between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like
the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to
come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of
wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had
escaped the repressive and regulating action of some controlling part—an
effect such as might be expected if a pawl should be jostled from the
teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I had time for much conjecture as
to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the
automaton itself. A slight but continuous convulsion appeared to have
possession of it. In body and head it shook like a man with palsy or an
ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure
was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and with a
movement almost too quick for the eye to follow shot forward across table
and chair, with both arms thrust forth to their full length—the posture
and lunge of a diver. Moxon tried to throw himself backward out of
reach, but he was too late: I saw the horrible thing’s hands close upon
his throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was overturned,
the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was black dark.
But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible
of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man’s
efforts to breathe. Guided by the infernal hubbub, I sprang to the
rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when
the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my
brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of the combatants on the
floor, Moxon underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron
hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open
and his tongue thrust out; and—horrible contrast!—upon the painted face
of his assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the
solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was blackness
and silence.
Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the memory
of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain recognized in my
attendant Moxon’s confidential workman, Haley. Responding to a look he
approached, smiling.
“Tell me about it,” I managed to say, faintly—“all about it.”
“Certainly,” he said; “you were carried unconscious from a burning
house—Moxon’s. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have to
do a little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit mysterious, too.
My own notion is that the house was struck by lightning.”
“And Moxon?”
“Buried yesterday—what was left of him.”
Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When
imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable enough. After
some moments of the keenest mental suffering I ventured to ask another
question:
“Who rescued me?”
“Well, if that interests you—I did.”
“Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue,
also, that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess-player
that murdered its inventor?”
The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he
turned and gravely said:
“Do you know that?”
“I do,” I replied; “I saw it done.”
That was many years ago. If asked to-day I should answer less
confidently.