The
truth is that each part of every vapour-engine is bred by its own special
breeders, whose function it is to breed that part, and that only, while
the combination of the parts into a whole forms another department of the
mechanical reproductive system, which is at present exceedingly complex
and difficult to see in its entirety.
"Complex now, but how much simpler and more intelligibly organised may it
not become in another hundred thousand years? or in twenty thousand? For
man at present believes that his interest lies in that direction; he
spends an incalculable amount of labour and time and thought in making
machines breed always better and better; he has already succeeded in
effecting much that at one time appeared impossible, and there seem no
limits to the results of accumulated improvements if they are allowed to
descend with modification from generation to generation. It must always
be remembered that man's body is what it is through having been moulded
into its present shape by the chances and changes of many millions of
years, but that his organisation never advanced with anything like the
rapidity with which that of the machines is advancing. This is the most
alarming feature in the case, and I must be pardoned for insisting on it
so frequently.
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