"So that even now the machines will only serve on condition of being
served, and that too upon their own terms; the moment their terms are not
complied with, they jib, and either smash both themselves and all whom
they can reach, or turn churlish and refuse to work at all. How many men
at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many
spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in tending them by
night and day? Is it not plain that the machines are gaining ground upon
us, when we reflect on the increasing number of those who are bound down
to them as slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the
advancement of the mechanical kingdom?
"The vapour-engine must be fed with food and consume it by fire even as
man consumes it; it supports its combustion by air as man supports it; it
has a pulse and circulation as man has. It may be granted that man's
body is as yet the more versatile of the two, but then man's body is an
older thing; give the vapour-engine but half the time that man has had,
give it also a continuance of our present infatuation, and what may it
not ere long attain to?
"There are certain functions indeed of the vapour-engine which will
probably remain unchanged for myriads of years--which in fact will
perhaps survive when the use of vapour has been superseded: the piston
and cylinder, the beam, the fly-wheel, and other parts of the machine
will probably be permanent, just as we see that man and many of the lower
animals share like modes of eating, drinking, and sleeping; thus they
have hearts which beat as ours, veins and arteries, eyes, ears, and
noses; they sigh even in their sleep, and weep and yawn; they are
affected by their children; they feel pleasure and pain, hope, fear,
anger, shame; they have memory and prescience; they know that if certain
things happen to them they will die, and they fear death as much as we
do; they communicate their thoughts to one another, and some of them
deliberately act in concert.
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