 without the thing produced being of the same kind as that which
produced it. Very few creatures reproduce after their own kind; they reproduce
something which has the potentiality of becoming that which their parents were.
Thus the butterfly lays an egg, which egg can become a caterpillar, which
caterpillar can become a chrysalis, which chrysalis can become a butterfly; and
though I freely grant that the machines cannot be said to have more than the
germ of a true reproductive system at present, have we not just seen that they
have only recently obtained the germs of a mouth and stomach? And may not some
stride be made in the direction of true reproduction which shall be as great as
that which has been recently taken in the direction of true feeding?
    It is possible that the system when developed may be in many cases a
vicarious thing. Certain classes of machines may be alone fertile, while the
rest discharge other functions in the mechanical system, just as the great
majority of ants and bees have nothing to do with the continuation of their
species, but get food and store it, without thought of breeding. One cannot
expect the parallel to be complete or nearly so; certainly not now, and probably
never; but is there not enough analogy existing at the present moment, to make
us feel seriously uneasy about the future, and to render it our duty to check
the evil while we can still do so? Machines can within certain limits beget
machines of any class, no matter how different to themselves. Every class of
machines will probably have its special mechanical breeders, and all the higher
ones will owe their existence to a large number of parents and not to two only.
    We are misled by considering any complicated machine as a single thing; in
truth it is a city or society, each member of which was bred truly after its
kind. We see a machine as a whole, we call it by a name and individualize it; we
look at our own limbs, and know that the combination forms an individual which
springs from a single centre of reproductive action; we therefore assume that
there can be no reproductive action which does not arise from a single centre;
but this assumption is unscientific, and the bare fact that no vapour-engine was
ever made entirely by another, or two others, of its own kind, is not sufficient
to warrant us in saying that vapour-engines have no reproductive system. The
truth is that each part of every vapour-engine is bred by its own special
breeders, whose function it is to breed that part, and that only, while the
combination
