a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing.
The Old Man had asserted that the human being is
merely a machine, and nothing more. The Young
Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars
and furnish his reasons for his position.]
Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine
is made?
Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal,
and so on.
O.M. Where are these found?
Y.M. In the rocks.
O.M. In a pure state?
Y.M. No—in ores.
O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the
ores?
Y.M. No—it is the patient work of
countless ages.
O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks
themselves?
Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
O.M. You would not require much, of such an
engine as that?
Y.M. No—substantially nothing.
O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how
would you proceed?
Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills;
blast out the iron ore; crush it, smelt it, reduce
it to pig-iron; put some of it through the Bessemer
process and make steel of it. Mine and treat
and combine several metals of which brass is made.
O.M. Then?
Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the
fine engine.
O.M. You would require much of this one?
Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers,
punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines
of a great factory?
Y.M. It could.
O.M. What could the stone engine do?
Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing
more, perhaps.
O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously
praise it?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. But not the stone one?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be
far above those of the stone one?
Y.M. Of course.
O.M. Personal merits?
Y.M. Personal merits? How do you
mean?
O.M. It would be personally entitled to the
credit of its own performance?
Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
O.M. Why not?
Y.M. Because its performance is not personal.
It is the result of the law of construction.
It is not a merit that it does the things which
it is set to do—it can’t help
doing them.
O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the
stone machine that it does so little?
Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and
no less than the law of its make permits and compels
it to do. There is nothing personal about
it; it cannot choose. In this process of “working
up to the matter” is it your idea to work up
to the proposition that man and a machine are about
the same thing, and that there is no personal merit
in the performance of either?
