n? whether those
things which we deem most purely spiritual are anything but disturbances
of equilibrium in an infinite series of levers, beginning with those that
are too small for microscopic detection, and going up to the human arm
and the appliances which it makes use of? whether there be not a
molecular action of thought, whence a dynamical theory of the passions
shall be deducible? Whether strictly speaking we should not ask what
kind of levers a man is made of rather than what is his temperament? How
are they balanced? How much of such and such will it take to weigh them
down so as to make him do so and so?"

The writer went on to say that he anticipated a time when it would be
possible, by examining a single hair with a powerful microscope, to know
whether its owner could be insulted with impunity. He then became more
and more obscure, so that I was obliged to give up all attempt at
translation; neither did I follow the drift of his argument. On coming
to the next part which I could construe, I found that he had changed his
ground.

"Either," he proceeds, "a great deal of action that has been called
purely mechanical and unconscious must be admitted to contain more
elements of consciousness than has been allowed hitherto (and in this
case germs of consciousness will be found in many actions of the higher
machines)--Or (assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time
denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action) the race
of man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In
this case there is no _a priori_ improbability in the descent of
conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist,
except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a
reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence however is
only apparent, as I shall presently show.

"Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually
existing machine; there is probably no known machine which is more than a
prototype of future mechanical life. The present machines are to the
future as the early Saurians to man. The largest of them will probably
greatly diminish in size. Some of the lowest vertebrate attained a much
greater bulk than has descended to their more highly organised living
representatives, and in like manner a diminution in the size of machines
has often attended their development and progress.

"Take the watch, for example;