We Take It That When The State Of Things Shall Have Arrived Which We
Have Been Above Attempting To Describe, Man Will Have Become To The
Machine What The Horse And The Dog Are To Man.
He will continue to
exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his
state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than
he is in his present wild state.
We treat our horses, dogs, cattle,
and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness; we give them whatever
experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt
that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals
far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is
reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for
their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower
animals. They cannot kill us and eat us as we do sheep; they will
not only require our services in the parturition of their young
(which branch of their economy will remain always in our hands), but
also in feeding them, in setting them right when they are sick, and
burying their dead or working up their corpses into new machines. It
is obvious that if all the animals in Great Britain save man alone
were to die, and if at the same time all intercourse with foreign
countries were by some sudden catastrophe to be rendered perfectly
impossible, it is obvious that under such circumstances the loss of
human life would be something fearful to contemplate - in like manner
were mankind to cease, the machines would be as badly off or even
worse.
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