Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Penguin Books, 1970) p. 223
3 Sept 2016
A machine is merely a supplementary limb
Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man's are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world – some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can manufacture.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment