When I heard this, it occurred to me that some
rumours of its substance might perhaps have become current among
Chowbok's people; for the agony of his fear had been too great to have
been inspired by the mere dread of being burnt alive before the statues.
I also questioned them about the museum of old machines, and the cause of
the apparent retrogression in all arts, sciences, and inventions. I
learnt that about four hundred years previously, the state of mechanical
knowledge was far beyond our own, and was advancing with prodigious
rapidity, until one of the most learned professors of hypothetics wrote
an extraordinary book (from which I propose to give extracts later on),
proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race
of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and
superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing
was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried the
country with him; and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had
not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which
period was arrived at after a series of compromises), and strictly
forbade all further improvements and inventions under pain of being
considered in the eye of the law to be labouring under typhus fever,
which they regard as one of the worst of all crimes.
Pages:
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113