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.
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