“For how many emergencies is an
oyster adapted? For as many as are likely to happen to it, and no
more. So are the machines; and so is man himself. The list of
casualties that daily occur to man through his want of adaptability is probably
as great as that occurring to the machines; and every day gives them some
greater provision for the unforeseen. Let any one examine the wonderful
self-regulating and self-adjusting contrivances which are now incorporated with
the vapour-engine, let him watch the way in which it supplies itself with oil;
in which it indicates its wants to those who tend it; in which, by the
governor, it regulates its application of its own strength; let him look at
that store-house of inertia and momentum the fly-wheel, or at the buffers on a
railway carriage; let him see how those improvements are being selected for
perpetuity which contain provision against the emergencies that may arise to
harass the machines, and then let him think of a hundred thousand years, and
the accumulated progress which they will bring unless man can be awakened to a
sense of his situation, and of the doom which he is preparing for himself.”
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