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DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES

A BUTLER ARTICLE FOR " THE PRESS" IDEAS LATER DEVELOPED IX " EREWHON » Of Samuel Butler's contributions to "The Press," one, an article in the form of a letter to the editor, under the heading ''Darwin Among the Machines," is the most notable. It was published on June 13, 1863, and it puts forward for the first time the ideas which were more fully developed in the chapters of "Erewhon," which are headed "The Book of the Machines." The text of the article is here reprinted. Sir, —There* are few things of which the present generation is more justly proud than of the wonderful improvements which are daily taking place in all sorts of mechanical contrivances. And indeed it is a matter for great congratulation on many grounds. It is unnecessary to mention these here, for they are sufficiently obvious; our present business lies with considerations which may somewhat tend to humble our pride, and to make us think seriously of the future prospects of the human race. If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, tfcte screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean the lever itself, and if we then examine the machinery of the Great Eastern, we find ourselves almost awestruck at the vast development of the mechanical world, at the gigantic strides with which it has advanced in comparison with the slow progress of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. We shall refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it l tending? What will be its upshot? To give a few hints toward the solution of these questions is the object of the present letter. We have used the words "mechanical life," the "mechanical kindgom," "the mechanical world," and so forth and we have done so advisedly, for as the vegetable kingdom was slowly developed from the mineral and as, in like manner, the animal supervened upon the vegetable so now in these last few ages an entirely new kingdom has sprung up, of which we as yet have only see what will one day be considered the antediluvian prototypes of the race. We regret deeply that our knowledge both of natural history and of machinery is too small to en- i able. us to undertake the gigantic i task of classifying machines into I • their genera and subgenera, species \ varieties, and subvarieties, and so 1 forth, of tracing the connecting i links between machines of widely j different characters, of pointing out < how subservience to the use of man £ has played that part among ( machines which natural selection j has performed in the animal and r vegetable kingdoms, of pointing out s rudimentary organs (see note), s A'hich exist in some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly use- s less, yet serving to mark descent I crom some ancestral type, which has f= either perished or been modified a into some new phase of mechanical v existence. We can only point out a ;his field for investigation; it must s De followed up by others whose d education and talents have been of

a much higher order than any which j we can lay claim to. | Some few hints we have deteri mined to venture upon, though we j do so with the profoundest diffidence. Firstly, we would remark, that as some of the lowest of the vertebrata attained a far greater size than has descended to their more highly organised living representatives, so a diminution in the size of machines has often attended j their development and progress, j Take the watch, for instance. I Examine the beautiful structure of j the little animal, watch the intellii gent play of the minute members | which compose it; yet this little ! creature is but a development of the j cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century—it is no deterioration from ithem. The day may come when clocks, which certainly at the present time are not diminishing in bulk, may be entirely superseded by the universal use of watches, in which case clocks will become extinct like the earlier saurians, while the watch (whose tendency has for some years been rather to decrease in size than the contrary) will remain the only existing type of an extinct race. The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and most mysterious questions of the day. We refer to the question: What sort of a creature man's next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be? We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be constantly better off .in his state of domestication under the beneficient rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle, and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent on us as ours is upon the lower animals. They cannot kill us and eat us as we do sheep, they will not only require our services in the parturition of

heir young (which branch of their iconomy will always remain in our lands) but also in feeding them, in ;etting them right when they are >ick, and burying their dead or vorking up their corpses into new nachines. It is obvious that if all he animals in Great. Britain save nan alone were to die, and if at he same time all intercourse were )y some sudden catastrophe to be •endered perfectly impossible, it is ibvious that under such circumstances the loss of human life would ?e something fearful to contemjlate—in like manner, were mantind to cease the machines would □e as badly off or even worse. The fact is that our interests are inseparable from theirs and theirs irom ours. Each race is dependenl Dn the others for innumerable aenefits, and until the reproductive jrgans of the animals have beer developed in a manner which w< are hardly yet able to. conceive they are entirely dependent upor man for even the continuation o: their species. It is true that thes< organs may be ultimately de veloped, inasmuch as man's inter gst lies in that direction; there i: nothing which our infatuated rac< would more desire than to see £ fertile union between two stearr engines: it is true that machinery even at this present time is employed in begetting machinery, ii becoming the parents of machinerj often after its own kind, but the days of flirtation, courtship, anc matrimony appear to be very remote and indeed can hardly be realised by our feeble and- imperfec* imaginations. Day by day, however, the mach ines are gaining ground upon us day by day we are becoming mor< subservient to them; more men art daily bound down as slaves tc tend them, more men are daily de voting the energy of their whol< lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply i question of time, but that the time will come when the machines wil hold the real supremacy over th< world and its inhabitants, is wha no person of a truly philosophica mind can for a moment question Our opinion is that war "to th< death should be instantly pro claimed against them. . Ever; machine of every sort should b< destroyed by the well-wisher of hi: species. Let there be no excep tions made, no quarter shown; le us at once go back to the primeval conditions of the race. If it b< urged that this is impossible undei the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that ou] servitude has commenced in gooc earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond ou; power to destroy, and that we ar< not only enslaved, but are ab solutely acquiescent in our bond age.

For the present we will leave this subject, which, we present gratis to the members of the Philosophical Society. Should they consent to avail themselves of the vast field v/hich we have pointed out, we shall endeavour to labour in it ourselves at some future and indefinite period.—l am, Sir, etc., CELLARIUS.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19351205.2.46

Bibliographic details

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21648, 5 December 1935, Page 8

Word Count
1,488

DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21648, 5 December 1935, Page 8

DARWIN AMONG THE MACHINES Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21648, 5 December 1935, Page 8

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