He then became more
and more obscure, so that I was obliged to give up all attempt at
translation; neither did I follow the drift of his argument. On coming
to the next part which I could construe, I found that he had changed his
ground.
"Either," he proceeds, "a great deal of action that has been called
purely mechanical and unconscious must be admitted to contain more
elements of consciousness than has been allowed hitherto (and in this
case germs of consciousness will be found in many actions of the higher
machines)--Or (assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time
denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action) the race
of man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In
this case there is no _a priori_ improbability in the descent of
conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist,
except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a
reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence however is
only apparent, as I shall presently show.
"Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually
existing machine; there is probably no known machine which is more than a
prototype of future mechanical life.
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