Some people may say that man's moral
influence will suffice to rule them; but I cannot think it will ever be
safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of any machine.
"Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in their being
without this same boasted gift of language? 'Silence,' it has been said
by one writer, 'is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our
fellow-creatures.'"
CHAPTER XXIV: THE MACHINES--continued
"But other questions come upon us. What is a man's eye but a machine for
the little creature that sits behind in his brain to look through? A
dead eye is nearly as good as a living one for some time after the man is
dead. It is not the eye that cannot see, but the restless one that
cannot see through it. Is it man's eyes, or is it the big seeing-engine
which has revealed to us the existence of worlds beyond worlds into
infinity? What has made man familiar with the scenery of the moon, the
spots on the sun, or the geography of the planets? He is at the mercy of
the seeing-engine for these things, and is powerless unless he tack it on
to his own identity, and make it part and parcel of himself. Or, again,
is it the eye, or the little see-engine, which has shown us the existence
of infinitely minute organisms which swarm unsuspected around us?
"And take man's vaunted power of calculation.
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