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him do so and so?’
The writer went on to say that he anticipated a time
when it would be possible, by examining a single hair with
a powerful microscope, to know whether its owner could
be insulted with impunity. He then became more and more
obscure, so that I was obliged to give up all attempt at trans-
lation; neither did I follow the drift of his argument. On
coming to the next part which I could construe, I found
that he had changed his ground.
‘Either,’ he proceeds, ‘a great deal of action that has been
called purely mechanical and unconscious must be admit-
ted to contain more elements of consciousness than has been
allowed hitherto (and in this case germs of consciousness
will be found in many actions of the higher machines)—Or
(assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time de-
nying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action)
the race of man has descended from things which had no
consciousness at all. In this case there is no a priori improb-
ability in the descent of conscious (and more than conscious)
machines from those which now exist, except that which is
suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a repro-
ductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence
however is only apparent, as I shall presently show.
‘Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any
actually existing machine; there is probably no known ma-
chine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical
life. The present machines are to the future as the early
Saurians to man. The largest of them will probably greatly
diminish in size. Some of the lowest vertebrate attained a