I would not urge more than this.
We may trust ourselves to deal with those that remain, and though I
should prefer to have seen the destruction include another two hundred
years, I am aware of the necessity for compromising, and would so far
sacrifice my own individual convictions as to be content with three
hundred. Less than this will be insufficient."
This was the conclusion of the attack which led to the destruction of
machinery throughout Erewhon. There was only one serious attempt to
answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as a part
of man's own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-corporeal
limbs. Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all
their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man's are loose, and
lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the
world--some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being
occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary
limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own
limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg
than any one can manufacture.
"Observe a man digging with a spade; his right fore-arm has become
artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a joint.
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