Have we not engines which
can do all manner of sums more quickly and correctly than we can? What
prizeman in Hypothetics at any of our Colleges of Unreason can compare
with some of these machines in their own line? In fact, wherever
precision is required man flies to the machine at once, as far preferable
to himself. Our sum-engines never drop a figure, nor our looms a stitch;
the machine is brisk and active, when the man is weary; it is
clear-headed and collected, when the man is stupid and dull; it needs no
slumber, when man must sleep or drop; ever at its post, ever ready for
work, its alacrity never flags, its patience never gives in; its might is
stronger than combined hundreds, and swifter than the flight of birds; it
can burrow beneath the earth, and walk upon the largest rivers and sink
not. This is the green tree; what then shall be done in the dry?
"Who shall say that a man does see or hear? He is such a hive and swarm
of parasites that it is doubtful whether his body is not more theirs than
his, and whether he is anything but another kind of ant-heap after all.
May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? An
affectionate machine-tickling aphid?
"It is said by some that our blood is composed of infinite living agents
which go up and down the highways and byways of our bodies as people in
the streets of a city.
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