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of the one has acted upon the other. Had there been no
driver, the callee would have been deaf to the caller. There
was a time when it must have seemed highly improbable
that machines should learn to make their wants known by
sound, even through the ears of man; may we not conceive,
then, that a day will come when those ears will be no lon-
ger needed, and the hearing will be done by the delicacy of
the machine’s own construction?—when its language shall
have been developed from the cry of animals to a speech as
intricate as our own?
‘It is possible that by that time children will learn the dif-
ferential calculus—as they learn now to speak—from their
mothers and nurses, or that they may talk in the hypotheti-
cal language, and work rule of three sums, as soon as they
are born; but this is not probable; we cannot calculate on
any corresponding advance in man’s intellectual or physi-
cal powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater
development which seems in store for the machines. Some
people may say that man’s moral influence will suffice to
rule them; but I cannot think it will ever be safe to repose
much trust in the moral sense of any machine.
‘Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in
their being without this same boasted gift of language?
‘Silence,’ it has been said by one writer, ‘is a virtue which
renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.’’

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