I
a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more.
The Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and
furnish his reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No—in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
Y.M. No—it is the patient work of countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
Y.M. No—substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine
several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. _Personal_ merits? How do you mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the
law of construction. It is not a _merit_ that it does the things which
it is set to do—it can’t _help_ doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its
make permits and compels it to do. There is nothing _personal_ about
it; it cannot choose. In this process of “working up to the matter” is
it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are
about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the
performance of either?
O.M. Yes—but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall
we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage
and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the
stuff of which the steel one was built—but along with a lot of sulphur
and stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from
the old geologic ages—prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which
nothing within the rock itself had either _power_ to remove or any
_desire_ to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; “Prejudices which nothing within the
rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.” Go on.
O.M. Prejudices must be removed by _outside influences_ or not at all.
Put that down.
Y.M. Very well; “Must be removed by outside influences or not at all.”
Go on.
O.M. The iron’s prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
To make it more exact, the iron’s absolute _indifference_ as to whether
the rock be removed or not. Then comes the _outside influence_ and
grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The _iron_ in the ore
is still captive. An _outside influence_ smelts it free of the clogging
ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further
progress. An _outside influence_ beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace
and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now—its
training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible
process can it be educated into _gold_. Will you set that down?
Y.M. Yes. “Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into
gold.”
O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men,
and steel men, and so on—and each has the limitations of his nature,
his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build
engines out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you
must not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones.
In each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
obstructing prejudicial ones by education—smelting, refining, and so
forth.
Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
O.M. Yes. Man the machine—man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
is, is due to his _make_, and to the _influences_ brought to bear upon
it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved,
directed, _commanded_, by _exterior_ influences—_solely_. He
_originates_ nothing, not even a thought.
Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
talking is all foolishness?
O.M. It is a quite natural opinion—indeed an inevitable opinion—but
_you _did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are
odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered
unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from
streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart
and brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors.
_Personally_ you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment
of the materials out of which your opinion is made; and personally you
cannot claim even the slender merit of _putting the borrowed materials
together_. That was done _automatically_—by your mental machinery, in
strict accordance with the law of that machinery’s construction. And
you not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have _not
even any command over it_.
Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but
that one?
O.M. Spontaneously? No. And _you did not form that one_; your machinery
did it for you—automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
need of it.
Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
O.M. Suppose you try?
Y.M. (_After a quarter of an hour_.) I have reflected.
O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion—as an experiment?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. With success?
Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command
over itself—it is worked _solely from the outside_. That is the law of
its make; it is the law of all machines.
Y.M. Can’t I _ever_ change one of these automatic opinions?
O.M. No. You can’t yourself, but _exterior influences_ can do it.
Y.M. And exterior ones _only_?
O.M. Yes—exterior ones only.
Y.M. That position is untenable—I may say ludicrously untenable.
O.M. What makes you think so?
Y.M. I don’t merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter
upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. _That _is not
the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal;
for I originated the project.
O.M. Not a shred of it. _It grew out of this talk with me_. But for
that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates
anything. All his thoughts, all his impulses, come _from the outside_.
Y.M. It’s an exasperating subject. The _first_ man had original
thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
O.M. It is a mistake. Adam’s thoughts came to him from the outside.
_You_ have a fear of death. You did not invent that—you got it from
outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death—none in
the world.
Y.M. Yes, he had.
O.M. When he was created?
Y.M. No.
O.M. When, then?
Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not
try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which
did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it
was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_.
He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had
not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil—he had
to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to
originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came
in with the apple _from the outside_. A man’s brain is so constructed
that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material
obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically,
not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no
command over it_.