 how those improvements are being selected for perpetuity which
contain provision against the emergencies that may arise to harass the machines,
and then let him think of a hundred thousand years, and the accumulated progress
which they will bring unless man can be awakened to a sense of his situation,
and of the doom which he is preparing for himself.5
    The misery is that man has been blind so long already. In his reliance upon
the use of steam he has been betrayed into increasing and multiplying. To
withdraw steam power suddenly will not have the effect of reducing us to the
state in which we were before its introduction; there will be a general break-up
and time of anarchy such as has never been known; it will be as though our
population were suddenly doubled, with no additional means of feeding the
increased number. The air we breathe is hardly more necessary for our animal
life than the use of any machine, on the strength of which we have increased our
numbers, is to our civilization; it is the machines which act upon man and make
him man, as much as man who has acted upon and made the machines; but we must
choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or seeing
ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in
comparison with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves.
    Herein lies our danger. For many seem inclined to acquiesce in so
dishonourable a future. They say that although man should become to the machines
what the horse and dog are to us, yet that he will continue to exist, and will
probably be better off in a state of domestication under the beneficent rule of
the machines than in his present wild condition. We treat our domestic animals
with much kindness. We give them whatever we believe to be the best for them;
and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has increased their happiness
rather than detracted from it. In like manner there is reason to hope that the
machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure
dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat
us; they will not only require our services in the reproduction and education of
their young, but also in waiting upon them as servants; in gathering food for
them, and feeding them; in restoring them to health when they are sick; and in
either burying their dead or working up their deceased members into new forms of
mechanical existence.
    The very nature of the motive power which works the advancement of the
machines precludes the possibility
