oduction, and not only do all the mighty and subtle
work possible on this planet better than we could do it, but with the
immense advantage of banishing from the earth's atmosphere screaming
consciousnesses which, in our comparatively clumsy race, make an
intolerable noise and fuss to each other about every petty ant-like
performance, looking on at all work only as it were to spring a rattle
here or blow a trumpet there, with a ridiculous sense of being
effective? I for my part cannot see any reason why a sufficiently
penetrating thinker, who can see his way through a thousand years or so,
should not conceive a parliament of machines, in which the manners were
excellent and the motions infallible in logic: one honourable
instrument, a remote descendant of the Voltaic family, might discharge a
powerful current (entirely without animosity) on an honourable
instrument opposite, of more upstart origin, but belonging to the
ancient edge-tool race which we already at Sheffield see paring thick
iron as if it were mellow cheese--by this unerringly directed discharge
operating on movements corresponding to what we call Estimates, and by
necessary mechanical consequence on movements corresponding to what we
call the Funds, which with a vain analogy we sometimes speak of as
"sensitive." For every machine would be perfectly educated, that is to
say, would have the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act not
the less infallibly for being free from the fussy accompaniment of that
consciousness to which our prejudice gives a supreme governing rank,
when in truth it is an idle parasite on the grand sequence of things."

"Nothing of the sort!" returned Trost, getting angry, and judging it
kind to treat me with some severity; "what you have heard me say is,
that our race will and must act as a nervous centre to the utmost
development of mechanical processes: the subtly refined powers of
machines will react in producing more subtly refined thinking processes
which will occupy the minds set free from grosser labour. Say, for
example, that all the scavengers work of London were done, so far as
human attention is concerned, by the occasional pressure of a brass
button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will then have a
multitude of brains set free for the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with
the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the
delicate machines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and