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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 299. 



it, lie is no logician. Being an automaton him- 

 self Mr. Tesla proceeded to make another au- 

 tomaton. He consented to make it full-grown 

 to save time. It was also unnecessary to endow 

 it with the power of propagating its kind, since 

 Mr. Tesla himself could make more machines 

 when he wanted them. He likewise consented 

 to make it without a mind, because a mind 

 ' / could easily embody in it by conveying to it my 

 own intelligence.'' 



With these slight differences from the Garden 

 of Eden Mr. Tesla's workshop has turned out a 

 kind of electrical boat or animated bath-tub 

 (see the cut) whose movements can be controlled 

 from a distance. This machine ' behaved just like 

 a blindfolded person obeying directions received 

 through the ear. ' It had a ' borrowed mind. ' In 

 fact, it had no mind at all, except in Mr. Tesla's 

 confused terminology. It had the same kind of 

 a mind as a Waltham watch. It is now Mr. 

 Tesla's intention to build an ' Automaton ' 

 ' which will have its own mind. ' "It will be ca- 

 pable of distinguishing bettueen what it ought and 

 what it ought not to do." 



Of course, such words are merely quibbles. 

 In exactly the same sense a steam engine has 

 its own mind, and distinguishes what it ought 

 from what it ought not to do. So did Maelzel's 

 mechanical duck. So did Babbage's calculating 

 engine. So does every device. Either the 

 words mean nothing new ; or else they are de- 

 ceptive quibbles. It does not mend matters to 

 say : ' my ideas on this subject have been put 

 forth with deep conviction, but in a humble spirit.^ 



Universal peace will be realized, he says, 

 "when all darkness shall be dissipated by the 

 light of science, when all nations shall be merged 

 into one, and patriotism shall be identical with re- 

 ligion, when there shall be one language, one 

 country, one end, then the dream ivill have become 

 reality." To bring about these desirable con- 

 clusions, an automatic fighting machine is nec- 

 essary. Mr. Tesla is now engaged on the 

 question automatically. 



III. But all this while the main point has 

 been lost sight of in divagations. How to in- 

 crease the forces moving the human mass is 

 the question. For reasons not adduced Mr. 

 Tesla declares that ' the resultant of all these 

 forces is always in the direction of reason.' 



Every individual man is an automaton, we 

 have seen, and will act unreasonably if played 

 upon by certain forces. But mankind, which 

 is made up of men, always acts reasonably. 

 'Tis strange; one seems to recall instances 

 from history that refute the assertion. And 

 indeed, Mr. Tesla himself does not really 

 believe it. What is this busy world, he asks, 

 but ' an immense clock-work ? ' A ' reason- 

 able ' clock-work ! He finds, finally that "the 

 great problem of increasing human energy is an- 

 sivered by the three tvords : Food, Peace, Work." 

 "These three words," he says "sound the key-note 

 of the Christian Religion." One had supposed 

 that Faith, Hope and Charity were the key- 

 notes of the Christian religion ; and that this 

 religion had no message at all to a world of 

 automatic men. 



With a touching little eulogy on iron, and 

 the prediction that aluminum is soon to take its 

 place, and a good word for coal and for gas- 

 engines, he passes on to the question of obtain- 

 ing energy direct from the sun, and discusses 

 the "possibility of a self-acting engine or machine, 

 inanimate, yet capable, like a living being, of de- 

 riving energy from the medium." His conclusion 

 is that it is possible though it cannot be pro- 

 duced for a long time yet. It is not pressing, 

 then, to discuss his results. We will wait until 

 some are forthcoming. 



The next paragraphs of Mr. Tesla's long 

 paper are taken up with the description of his 

 experiments on electrical matters, wireless te- 

 legraphy (which Marconi independently discov- 

 ered and has made practical), etc. Into these 

 we will not follow him, except to say that he 

 claims to be able to produce electrical effects on 

 the planets Venus or Mars by methods which 

 he is very careful not to explain. He expects 

 an answer, too : " That we can send a message 

 to a planet is certain, that we can get an answer is 

 probable ; man is not the only being in the Infinite 

 gifted with a mind." 



We might go on page by page, pointing out 

 error, extravagance and bathos like the pre- 

 ceding. There seems to be no special need to 

 go further. It should be evident to any im- 

 partial reader that the value of Mr. Tesla's 

 general philosophical speculations and opinions 

 is exactly nil. The value of his work in elec- 



