280 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



unconsciously dreamed a dream which, years after, he 

 wove into a tale that formed the setting of some of the 

 boldest speculations that have startled the world. 



Perhaps the most audacious chapter in this book of 

 audacities was conceived and drafted under the vast 

 shadow cast by the great chain. The Book of the 

 Machines was first published in a high-class New 

 Zealand journal, the Christchurch Press, under the 

 title of Darwin among the Machines. It is an argument 

 for the ultimate evolution of consciousness in machines. 

 No class of beings has made such rapid progress. They 

 already possess most of our faculties and structures : 

 they eat, drink, and sleep ; they have hearts, and they 

 feel ; they are susceptible of hope and fear, shame and 

 anger ; they remember and foresee. They employ a 

 host of servants. They have even a reproductive 

 system and breed other machines. They evidently 

 live, or at least possess germs that may be developed 

 into a new phase of life. They are plainly gaining ground 

 on us. Are we not alarmed at the prospect ? Reacting 

 no man, and making him, as they do, they may yet 

 overtake us, and we may one day be superseded by our 

 own creatures. 



This glorification or deification of machines led the 

 author of the inglorious speculation into one that was 

 plausible in comparison. As others were doing in those 

 years in London, Butler contends for " the rights of 

 vegetables." The subtle thinker who could on so many 

 points identify mere mechanisms with the marvellous 

 framework of humanity was at no loss when he came 

 to vindicate those " rights " on the ground that vegetal 

 organisms have all the powers and sensibilities that 

 adorn the animal. In connection with it he first ex- 

 pounded his theory of organic memory. The action 

 that each generation takes, by recajjitulating the history 

 of its parent organisms, can be explained only by the 

 supposition that it has been guided by memory, and 

 this implies that there is an organic memory transmitted 

 from one generation to another. The theory was long 



