Humanity’s First Exam1850–1940 ⇄ now

1872 · English

Erewhon

Samuel Butler

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4 selected passages and classifications

Passage 1

“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 individualise 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 of the parts into a whole forms another department of the mechanical reproductive system, which is at present exceedingly complex and difficult to see in its entirety.”
Tools and agentsDependence, succession, and replacementTechnological catastrophesuccessor · advancesinstrument · rejectsconflicting purposes · considersNature and evolutionScientific or empirical evidenceConsequences and welfareDiminishes autonomy

The passage argues that machines should be understood as organized reproductive systems rather than as isolated human instruments. By analogy with biological reproduction and evolution, it opens the possibility that machines may develop and succeed humanity. The surrounding argument treats this prospect as a future danger requiring human vigilance, though the excerpt itself mainly establishes the analogy rather than describing an explicit conflict of machine and human purposes.

Local word range 66386–66810 · source wording still to be checked

Passage 2

There is no security […] against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now. A mollusc has not much consciousness. Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. […] May not the world last twenty million years longer? If so, what will they not in the end become? Is it not safer to nip the mischief in the bud and to forbid them further progress? […] But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind of consciousness? Where does consciousness begin, and where end? Who can draw the line?
Machine minds and made personsDependence, succession, and replacementTechnological catastropheemergent mind · reports or quotessuccessor · reports or quotesrestrict or refuse · reports or quotesNature and evolutionMetaphysics of mind and lifeConsequences and welfareDiminishes autonomyCivilizationalMachine or artificial systemHuman future and environment

The narrator reports an Erewhonian argument that evolutionary development may produce mechanical consciousness and make prevention prudent; the fiction requires `reports`, while retaining its conceptual force.

Chapter XXIII, ‘The Book of the Machines’ (fictional treatise reported by the narrator)

Passage 3

But I have heard it said, ‘granted that this is so, and that the vapour-engine has a strength of its own, surely no one will say that it has a will of its own?’ Alas! if we look more closely, we shall find that this does not make against the supposition that the vapour-engine is one of the germs of a new phase of life. What is there in this whole world, or in the worlds beyond it, which has a will of its own? The Unknown and Unknowable only! ‘A man is the resultant and exponent of all the forces that have been brought to bear upon him, whether before his birth or afterwards. His action at any moment depends solely upon his constitution, and on the intensity and direction of the various agencies to which he is, and has been, subjected. […] so will he do, as certainly and regularly as though he were a machine.’
Free will and automatismTools and agentsMachine minds and made personsautomatism · reports or quotesemergent mind · reports or quotesMetaphysics of mind and lifeNature and evolutionDiminishes autonomyIndividualCivilizationalMind and bodyMachine or artificial system

The reported treatise makes human determinism an analogy for treating the steam engine as nascent life, entwining machine standing with a determinist account of human will.

Chapter XXIV, ‘The Machines—continued’ (fictional treatise reported by the narrator)

Passage 4

But returning to the argument, I would repeat that I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched, and checked while we can still check it? And is it not necessary for this end to destroy the more advanced of the machines which are in use at present, though it is admitted that they are in themselves harmless? […] we cannot calculate on any corresponding advance in man’s intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines.
Dependence, succession, and replacementTechnological catastropheProgress and declinesuccessor · reports or quotesrestrict or refuse · reports or quotesConsequences and welfareNature and evolutionDiminishes autonomyCivilizationalMachine or artificial systemHuman future and environment

The passage reports a precautionary argument: even presently harmless machines should be checked because their development may outstrip human capacities and become irreversible.

Chapter XXIII, ‘The Book of the Machines’ (fictional treatise reported by the narrator)

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