we should
become extinct in six weeks. A few miserable individuals might linger, but even
these in a year or two would become worse than monkeys. Man's very soul is due
to the machines; it is a machine-made thing; he thinks as he thinks, and feels
as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their
existence is quite as much a sine quâ non for his, as his for theirs. This fact
precludes us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely
it indicates that we should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense
with, lest they should tyrannize over us even more completely.
    True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those
thrive best who use machinery wherever its use is possible with profit; but this
is the art of the machines - they serve that they may rule. They bear no malice
towards man for destroying a whole race of them provided he creates a better
instead; on the contrary, they reward him liberally for having hastened their
development. It is for neglecting them that he incurs their wrath, or for using
inferior machines, or for not making sufficient exertions to invent new ones, or
for destroying them without replacing them; yet these are the very things we
ought to do, and do quickly; for though our rebellion against their infant power
will cause infinite suffering, what will not things come to, if that rebellion
is delayed?
    They have preyed upon man's grovelling preference for his material over his
spiritual interests, and have betrayed him into supplying that element of
struggle and warfare without which no race can advance. The lower animals
progress because they struggle with one another; the weaker die, the stronger
breed and transmit their strength. The machines being of themselves unable to
struggle, have got man to do their struggling for them; as long as he fulfils
this function duly, all goes well with him - at least he thinks so; but the
moment he fails to do his best for the advancement of machinery by encouraging
the good and destroying the bad, he is left behind in the race of competition;
and this means that he will be made uncomfortable in a variety of ways, and
perhaps die.
    So that even now the machines will only serve on condition of being served,
and that too upon their own terms; the moment their terms are not complied with,
they jib, and either smash both themselves and all whom they can reach, or turn
churlish and refuse to work at all. How many men at this hour are