ty and delicacy of their organisation, daily giving
them greater skill and supplying more and more of that self-regulating
self-acting power which will be better than any intellect?

"What a new thing it is for a machine to feed at all! The plough, the
spade, and the cart must eat through man's stomach; the fuel that sets
them going must burn in the furnace of a man or of horses. Man must
consume bread and meat or he cannot dig; the bread and meat are the fuel
which drive the spade. If a plough be drawn by horses, the power is
supplied by grass or beans or oats, which being burnt in the belly of the
cattle give the power of working: without this fuel the work would cease,
as an engine would stop if its furnaces were to go out.

"A man of science has demonstrated 'that no animal has the power of
originating mechanical energy, but that all the work done in its life by
any animal, and all the heat that has been emitted from it, and the heat
which would be obtained by burning the combustible matter which has been
lost from its body during life, and by burning its body after death, make
up altogether an exact equivalent to the heat which would be obtained by
burning as much food as it has used during its life, and an amount of
fuel which would generate as much heat as its body if burned immediately
after death.' I do not know how he has found this out, but he is a man
of science--how then can it be objected against the future vitality of
the machines that they are, in their present infancy, at the beck and
call of beings who are themselves incapable of originating mechanical
energy?

"The main point, however, to be observed as affording cause for alarm is,
that whereas animals were formerly the only stomachs of the machines,
there are now many which have stomachs of their own, and consume their
food themselves. This is a great step towards their becoming, if not
animate, yet something so near akin to it, as not to differ more widely
from our own life than animals do from vegetables. And though man should
remain, in some respects, the higher creature, is not this in accordance
with the practice of nature, which allows superiority in some things to
animals which have, on the whole, been long surpassed? Has she not
allowed the ant and the bee to retain superiority over man in the
organisation of their communities and social arrangements, the bird in
traversing the air, the fish in swimming, the horse in strength and
fl