326 On Animal Instinct : in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 



Passing now fron] explanations v.hich explain nothing, is there any 

 light in the theory that animals are "automata?" Was my little 

 Dipper a diving machine ? It seems to me that there is at least a 

 glimmer shining through this idea — a glimmer as of real light 

 struggling through a thick fog. The fog arises out of the mists of 

 language — the confounding and confusing of meanings literal with 

 meanings metaphorical — the mistaking of partial for complete anal- 

 ogies. Machine is the word by which we designate those combinations 

 of mechanical force which are contrived and put together by man to 

 do certain things. One essential characteristic of them is that they 

 belong to the world of the not-living ; they are destitute of that which 

 we know as life, and of all the attributes by which it is distinguished. 

 Machines have no sensibility. When we say of anything that it has 

 been done by a machine, we mean that it has been done by something 

 which is not alive. In this literal signification it is therefore pure 

 nonsense to say that anything living is a machine. It is simply a 

 misapplication of language, to the extent of calling one thing by the 

 name of another thing, and that other so diiferent as to be its opposite 

 or contradictory. There can be no reasoning, no clearing up of truth, 

 unless we keep definite words for definite ideas. Or if the idea to 

 which a given word has been appropriated be a complex idea, and we 

 desire to deal with one element only of the meaning, sej^arated from 

 the rest, then, indeed, we may continue to use the word for this 

 selected portion of its meaning, provided always that we bear in mind 

 what it is that we are doing. This may be, and often is, a necessary 

 operation, for language is not rich "enough to furnish separate words 

 for all the complex elements which enter into ideas apparently very 

 simple ; and so of this word, machine, there is an element in its 

 meaning which is always very important, which in common language 

 is often pre-dominant, and which we may legitimately choose to make 

 exclusive of every other. This essential element in our idea of a 

 machine, is that its powers, whatever they may be, are derived and 

 not original. There may be great knowledge in the work done by a 

 machine, but the knowledge is not in it. There may be great skill, 

 but the skill is not in it; great fin-esight, but the foresight is not 

 in it; in short, great exhibition of all the powers of mind, but the 

 mind is not in the machine its^elf. Whatever it does is done in 

 virtue of its construction, which construction is due to a mind 

 which has designed it for the exhibition of certain powers, and 

 the performance of certain functions. These may be very simple, or 

 they may be very complicated, but whether simple or complicated, 

 the whole play of its operations is limited and measui'ed by the inteu- 



