MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



site or contradictory. There can be no reasoning, no clear 

 ing up of truth, unless we keep definite words for definite 

 ideas. Or if the idea to which a given word has been ap 

 propriated be a complex idea, and we desire to deal with one 

 element only of the meaning separated 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 predominant, 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 know 

 ledge is not in it ; there may be great skill, but the skill is 

 not in it ; great foresight, but foresight is not in it ; in short, 

 great exhibition of all the powers of mind, but the mind is 

 not in the machine itself. 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 opera 

 tions is limited and measured by the intentions of its con 

 structor. If he be himself limited, either in opportunity or 

 knowledge or in power, there will be a corresponding limi 

 tation in the things he invents and makes. Accordingly, in 

 regard to man, he cannot make a machine which has any of 

 the gifts or powers of life. He can construct nothing which 

 has sensibility or consciousness, or any other of even the 

 lowest attributes of living creatures. And this absolute de 

 stitution of even apparent originality in a machine, this entire 



