Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?

Die Hand hat sich die zu ihrer Unterstützung dienenden, ihre Kraft und Geschicklichkeit erhöhenden Werkzeuge gerade so geformt, wie sie dieselben braucht. Wegen dieser ihrer Handlichkeit sind sie das Handwerkzeug. In der Hand, dem auswendigen Gehirn, sind sie deshalb die Culturbegründer, weil sie Theil haben an dem Verhältniss von Hand und Hirn, dessen Bedeutung Eduard Reich kurz und bündig mit dem Ausspruch würdigt: „Das best entwickelte Gehirn und das best entwickelte Greifwerkzeug vereinigen sich in den der wahren Gesittung fähigen Menschenarten, und das gegenseitige Verhältniss der beiden Organe ist die Quelle alles Könnens, alles Wissens und aller Weisheit" (Der Mensch und die Seele, S. 178.) Von den beiden Seiten des primitiven Werkzeugs, dem Zweck und der Form, besteht jener in der bewusst vom Menschen erstrebten Beseitigung eines momentanen Mangels, oder was dasselbe ist, Herstellung eines Vortheils, diese aber, die Gestaltung des für den Zweck verwendeten Stoffes, geht unbewusst vor sich. Dieser unbewusste Vorgang, dass die organischen Gebilde, Thätigkeiten und Beziehungen und die mechanischen Vorrichtungen sich wie Vorbild und Nachbild verhalten, und dass der Mechanismus nur als Mittel zur Aufdeckung und zum Verständniss des Organismus verwendet wird, wurde als das eigentliche Wesen der organischen Projection erkannt.

It is to the existence of these "schemata" that we owe the power of projecting our recognition of posture, movement and locality beyond the limits of our own bodies to the end of some instrument held in the hand. Without them we could not probe with a stick, nor use a spoon unless our eyes were fixed upon the plate. Anything which participates in the conscious movement of our bodies is added to the model of ourselves and becomes part of these schemata; a woman's power of localisation may extend to the feather in her hat.

In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manu facture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the work man, who becomes its mere living appendage. " The miserable routine of endless drudgery and toil in which the same mechanical process is gone through over and over again, is like the labour of Sisyphus. The burden of labour, like the rock, keeps ever falling back on the worn-out labourer." 3 At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to- the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. 8 The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest.

Thus, if we consider only those typical cases in which the complete triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find this essential difference between them: _instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments_. … The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, serve any purpose, free the living being from every new difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended.

This was the conclusion of the attack which led to the destruction of machinery throughout Erewhon. There was only one serious attempt to answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as a part of man’s own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-corporeal limbs. Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man’s are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world—some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can manufacture.