Such
Tribes Only Advance Pari Passu With The Creatures Upon Which They
Feed.
It is a mistake, then, to take the view adopted by a previous
correspondent of this paper, to consider
The machines as identities,
to animalise them and to anticipate their final triumph over mankind.
They are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human
organism is most especially advancing, and every fresh invention is
to be considered as an additional member of the resources of the
human body. Herein lies the fundamental difference between man and
his inferiors. As regard his flesh and blood, his senses, appetites,
and affections, the difference is one of degree rather than of kind,
but in the deliberate invention of such unity of limbs as is
exemplified by the railway train - that seven-leagued foot which five
hundred may own at once - he stands quite alone.
In confirmation of the views concerning mechanism which we have been
advocating above, it must be remembered that men are not merely the
children of their parents, but they are begotten of the institutions
of the state of the mechanical sciences under which they are born and
bred. These things have made us what we are. We are children of the
plough, the spade, and the ship; we are children of the extended
liberty and knowledge which the printing press has diffused. Our
ancestors added these things to their previously existing members;
the new limbs were preserved by natural selection and incorporated
into human society; they descended with modifications, and hence
proceeds the difference between our ancestors and ourselves. By the
institutions and state of science under which a man is born it is
determined whether he shall have the limbs of an Australian savage or
those of a nineteenth-century Englishman. The former is supplemented
with little save a rug and a javelin; the latter varies his physique
with the changes of the season, with age and with advancing or
decreasing wealth. If it is wet he is furnished with an organ which
is called an umbrella and which seems designed for the purpose of
protecting either his clothes or his lungs from the injurious effects
of rain. His watch is of more importance to him than a good deal of
his hair, at any rate than of his whiskers; besides this he carries a
knife and generally a pencil case. His memory goes in a pocket-book.
He grows more complex as he becomes older and he will then be seen
with a pair of spectacles, perhaps also with false teeth and a wig;
but, if he be a really well-developed specimen of the race, he will
be furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and a
coachman.
Let the reader ponder over these last remarks and he will see that
the principal varieties and sub-varieties of the human race are not
now to be looked for among the negroes, the Circassians, the Malays,
or the American aborigines, but among the rich and the poor. The
difference in physical organisation between these two species of man
is far greater than that between the so-called types of humanity.
The rich man can go from here to England whenever he feels inclined,
the legs of the other are by an invisible fatality prevented from
carrying him beyond certain narrow limits. Neither rich nor poor as
yet see the philosophy of the thing, or admit that he who can tack a
portion of one of the P. and O. boats on to his identity is a much
more highly organised being than one who cannot. Yet the fact is
patent enough, if we once think it over, from the mere consideration
of the respect with which we so often treat those who are richer than
ourselves. We observe men for the most part (admitting, however,
some few abnormal exceptions) to be deeply impressed by the superior
organisation of those who have money. It is wrong to attribute this
respect to any unworthy motive, for the feeling is strictly
legitimate and springs from some of the very highest impulses of our
nature. It is the same sort of affectionate reverence which a dog
feels for man, and is not infrequently manifested in a similar
manner.
We admit that these last sentences are open to question, and we
should hardly like to commit ourselves irrecoverably to the
sentiments they express; but we will say this much for certain,
namely, that the rich man is the true hundred-handed Gyges of the
poets. He alone possesses the full complement of limbs who stands at
the summit of opulence, and we may assert with strictly scientific
accuracy that the Rothschilds are the most astonishing organisms that
the world has ever yet seen. For to the nerves or tissues, or
whatever it be that answers to the helm of a rich man's desires,
there is a whole army of limbs seen and unseen attachable; he may be
reckoned by his horse-power, by the number of foot-pounds which he
has money enough to set in motion. Who, then, will deny that a man
whose will represents the motive power of a thousand horses is a
being very different from the one who is equivalent but to the power
of a single one?
Henceforward, then, instead of saying that a man is hard up, let us
say that his organisation is at a low ebb, or, if we wish him well,
let us hope that he will grow plenty of limbs. It must be remembered
that we are dealing with physical organisations only. We do not say
that the thousand-horse man is better than a one-horse man, we only
say that he is more highly organised and should be recognised as
being so by the scientific leaders of the period. A man's will,
truth, endurance, are part of him also, and may, as in the case of
the late Mr. Cobden, have in themselves a power equivalent to all the
horse-power which they can influence; but were we to go into this
part of the question we should never have done, and we are compelled
reluctantly to leave our dream in its present fragmentary condition.
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