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making calculations without tiring ; and not only that, but this machine 
supersedes the work of the compositor and corrector for the press, by im- 
pressing its calculations, when made, upon paper in such a manner that they 
appear printed. If you go to Somerset House, and put in certain figures 
and make certain arrangements with the machinery, you can make the 
machine turn out square numbers or cube numbers, or fourth powers, or 
sixth powers. I can do all that by putting in for the square numbers two or 
three figures, for qibe numbers a few more, and so on, and I can produce all 
the results I want by the turn of a handle. At the same time I put in a 
piece of soft paper, and that soft paper comes out impressed with the figures 
1, 2, 3, 4, and opposite these figures as they appear I get the squares or cubes 
of these numbers as I want them. Well, now, what is there if I examine 
the machine ? What force is acting there ? There is simply the force of my 
arm turning a handle, which then puts a series of wheels in motion, and the 
effect of that force is to produce the complicated calculation of which I have 
spoken. But is that force, — which I could employ by means of a steam 
engine instead of my arm, or by simply letting a weight fall to the ground — 
I want to know, is that force the source of the calculating power of that 
machine ? I say that to call that mechanical force which turns that wheel 
the calculating power of the machine would be to fall into the very error 
which is contained in the paragraph quoted by Mr. Wheatley from Dr. 
Odling as to the power of cosmical force 
“ That all actions of the animal body are traceable to cosmical force ; that 
in living, as in dead matter, there is no creation of force ; and that any 
explanation of the phenomena of life which recognizes the agency of vital 
force is simply no explanation at all.” 
And he goes on to trace the whole of that force to solar force. According to 
Dr. Odling, all my life and all my thought are only manifestations of solar 
force ; while, according to Professor Huxley, all my mind, all my thought, 
all my power of calculating and power of action, are simply the result of pro- 
toplasm, acted upon by the combinations and combining powers of C H 0 
and N. When I come to animal chemistry, I find the operation of the 
problem : I find that C H 0 and N are capable of giving us an infinite series 
of combinations, and may have almost any numbers and almost any powers 
applied to them. Now when I go as a thinking being to that calculating 
machine, I should consider the man unphilosophical and absurd who told me 
that the calculating power consisted simply in the inorganic force or the 
organic force which caused the handle to revolve. Am I to suppose that so 
much mutton or beef eaten by me, and converted into so much proto- 
plasm, has produced that thought and calculation ? I will take a man to 
turn the handle wlio is quite incapable of ascertaining a square or a 
cube, and another man, who never heard of logarithms, shall put in the 
figures, and still the machine shall turn you out any number of 
logarithms, squares, and cubes. Or suppose I take so much water, 
and so much fuel, and produce so much steam to do the work for me — 
