We are unable to point to any example of
a race absolutely devoid of extra-corporaneous limbs, but we can see
among the Chinese that with the failure to invent new limbs, a
civilisation becomes as much fixed as that of the ants; and among
savage tribes we observe that few implements involve a state of
things scarcely human at all. Such tribes only advance pari passu
with the creatures upon which they feed.
It is a mistake, then, to take the view adopted by a previous
correspondent of this paper; to consider the machines as identities,
to animalise them, and to anticipate their final triumph over
mankind. They are to be regarded as the mode of development by which
human organism is most especially advancing, and every fresh
invention is to be considered as an additional member of the
resources of the human body. Herein lies the fundamental difference
between man and his inferiors. As regards his flesh and blood, his
senses, appetites, and affections, the difference is one of degree
rather than of kind, but in the deliberate invention of such unity of
limbs as is exemplified by the railway train--that seven-leagued foot
which five hundred may own at once--he stands quite alone.
In confirmation of the views concerning mechanism which we have been
advocating above, it must be remembered that men are not merely the
children of their parents, but they are begotten of the institutions
of the state of the mechanical sciences under which they are born and
bred.
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