And Indeed It Is
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, the
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 to 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 kingdom. We shall find it
impossible to refrain from asking ourselves what the end of this
mighty movement is to be. In what direction is it tending? What
will be its upshot? To give a few imperfect hints towards a solution
of these questions is the object of the present letter.
We have used the words "mechanical life," "the mechanical kingdom,"
"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 seen 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 enable us to undertake the gigantic task of
classifying machines into the genera and sub-genera, species,
varieties and sub-varieties, and so forth, of tracing the connecting
links between machines of widely different characters, of pointing
out how subservience to the use of man has played that part among
machines which natural selection has performed in the animal and
vegetable kingdoms, of pointing out rudimentary organs {1} which
exist in some few machines, feebly developed and perfectly useless,
yet serving to mark descent from some ancestral type which has either
perished or been modified into some new phase of mechanical
existence. We can only point out this field for investigation; it
must be followed by others whose education and talents have been of a
much higher order than any which we can lay claim to.
Some few hints we have determined to venture upon, though we 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 their
development and progress. Take the watch for instance. Examine the
beautiful structure of the little animal, watch the intelligent play
of the minute members which compose it; yet this little creature is
but a development of the cumbrous clocks of the thirteenth century -
it is no deterioration from them.
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