GOD IN NA TURK 199 



tial conception of a machine is twofold. First, it is 

 a merely mechanical structure, put together to do 

 certain things ; secondly, it must be related to a 

 combiner and constructor. If we think proper to 

 call the young merganser a machine, we cannot ad 

 mit the first of these characters without also admitting 

 the second more especially as the bird is in every 

 way a more complex and marvellous machine than 

 any of human contrivance. He concludes his notice 

 of this attempt at explanation in the following sugges 

 tive words : 



Passing now from explanations which 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 a real light struggling through a thick fog. 

 The fog arises out of the mists of languagethe ^confound 

 ing and confusion of meanings literal with meanings meta 

 phorical, the mistaking of partial for complete analogies. 

 Machine is the word by which we designate those com 

 binations 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 k 

 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 b&amp;lt; 

 done by something which is not alive. In this literal signi 

 fication it is therefore pure nonsense to say that any giving 

 being is a machine. It is simply a misapplicati on- of lan 

 guage to the extent of calling one thing by the name 

 L?h r thing, and that other so different as to be its oo^ 



