What Is Man? and Other Essays

[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. 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?

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.

Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.

O.M. You would require much of this one?

O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word all the cunning machines of a great factory?

Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly—nothing more, perhaps.

O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?

O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone one?

O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance?