Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1935. A PROPHET AMONG THE MACHINES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 138, 7 December 1935, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1935. A PROPHET AMONG THE MACHINES

Last Wednesday was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Samuel Butler, author, satirist, philosopher, artist, classical scholar, and musician. The centenary has a particular interest for New Zealand because Butler lived here for a time and worked as cadet and sheepfarmer in Canterbury. It was there that he conceived the. ideas which subsequently grew into "Erewhon," his most popular though not his most famous work. The first written expression of the "Erewhon" philosophy^ was, indeed, published in the Chrislchurch "Press" under the title "Darwin Among the Machines," and the scene for the opening chapters of the later complete work was set in the Upper Rangitata. But apart from this local interest Butler's centenary deserves far more attention than it has been given in the Dominion,- for if his warnings had been heeded all the conditions of our social life, and even the issues which confronted electors on the Wednesday preceding his centenary might, have been changed. We cannot, in a brief article, examine his views on crime, health, Darwinian theories, morals, and manners—though in passing we may note how far civilisation has gone towards regarding crime as a matter for correction rather than punishment—but it is worth while to consider the basic agreement between Butler's attitude to accelerated mechanisation and the views now being expressed by statesmen, economists, and social philosophers. ButleF's warning, given with allegory, hyperbole, and satire, was that mechanisation would eventually rule man—that the machine would become die master and not the servant. Butler told how in "Erewhon" some five hundred years before his arrival a philosopher had warned the people of this probable outcome, claiming that machines had developed so rapidly that there was indeed a danger of the more advanced models becoming animate and acquiring the power of conscious action. He convinced the people and after years of debate and civil war the anti-machinists won and enforced a decree for the destruction of all the more dangerous forms of machinery —those which had been discovered within the previous 271 years. If we disregard the extravagant form in which the philosophy is presented, it is remarkable how cleverly and truthfully 'the facts of the contest between man and machines are set forth. Butler's "Erewhonian" professor, for example, discusses the possibility of biological progress equalling mechanical development when machines are so far improved that "hearing will be done by the delicacy of the machine's own construction" (a fact today with robot wireless control):

It is possible that by that time children will learn the differential calculus —as they learn now to speak—from their mothers and nurses, or that they may talk in the hypothetical language and -work rule-of-three sums, as soon as they are born, but this is not probable; we cannot count on any corresponding advance in man's intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines. Some people may say that man's moral influence will suffice to rule them; but.l cannot think 'it will ever be safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of any machine.

Would it be a gross exaggeration to declare today that the moral influence of man is proving inadequate to control the growing forces of mechanisation? Or to say that man himself may become "a sort of parasite upon the machines, an affectionate machine-tickling aphid"? About sixty-four years ago Butler wrote (through his "Erewhonian" professor) :

How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many spend their whole lives from the cradle to the grave in tending them night and day? Is it not plain that the machines are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect upon the increasing number of those who are bound down to them as slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom?

The process is much more advanced now. Butler did not live to see the marvellous mechanical developments of the last twenty years. He did not witness the fulfilment of his prophecy as we witness it in a civilisation made rich by mechanical science but so lacking in power to use its riches that millions are in want and desperate efforts are made to save others from poverty and ruin by the paradoxical expedient of destroying their possessions. We are not following the "Erewhonians" in destroying the machines, but we are destroying their products. Butler foresaw something of this kind and the alternative development which he expressed in likening machines to extra-corporeal limbs, which would increase the power of those already powerful.

Man's body, said the professor, in pointing to the danger, is what it is through having been moulded into its present shape by the chances and changes of many millions of years; but his organisation never advanced with anything like the rapidity with which that of the machines is advancing.

Statesmen, scientists, and economists now recognise the lag in the improvement of man's power to •command the. forces he has created.

More and more attention is being concentrated upon means for overtaking the lost ground. In part the effort is wasted through conflict, and through various attempts to apply a mechanical correction which will save man from having to correct his own outlook. The true remedy, we believe, is to be found in the words of a great engineer, and no mean philosopher, when he reviewed with grave concern the march of mechanical progress. In his presidential address to the British Association in 1932 Sir Alfred Ewing spoke of the sense of perplexity and frustration .in the present-day thinker's attitude to mechanical progress. An old exponent of applied mechanics may be forgiven, he said, if he expresses something of the disillusion with which, now standing aside, he watches the sweeping pageant of discovery and invention in which he used to take unbounded delight. It is impossible not to ask, Whither does this tremendous procession tend? What, after all, is its good? What its probable influence upon the future of the human race? Beyond question many of- the engineer's gifts were benefits to man, making life fuller, wider, healthier, richer in comforts and interests and in such happiness as material things could promote. But we are acutely aware that the engineer's gifts have been and may be grievously abused. In some there is potential tragedy as well as present burden. Man was ethically unprepared for so great a bounty. In the slow evolution of- morals he is still unfit for the tremendous responsibility it entails. The command of Nature has been put into his hands before he knows how to command himself. Sir Alfred disclaimed possession of the power to point to a remedy, but in his reference to man's moral unpreparedness and in the concluding sentence of his address we may discern how he would advise that the remedy should be sought. Some, he said, might envisage a distant Utopia, with perfect adjustment of labour and the fruits of labour. Even so, there would remain the problem of spending the leisure man had won by handing over nearly all his burden to an untiring mechanical slave. Dare he hope for such spiritual betterment as will qualify him to use it well? God grant he may strive for that and attain it. It is Only by seeking he will find. I cannot think that man is destined to atrophy and cease through cultivating what after all is one of his most God-like faculties—the creative ingenuity of the engineer. The solution, after all, is only partly economic and that the least important part. The complete solution must be ethical and spiritual. The "Erewhonian" professor must be proved to be wrong in attributing to man no greater moral influence than a machine.