The writer, after enlarging on the above for several pages, proceeded to inquire whether traces of the approach of such a new phase of life could be perceived at present; whether we could see any tenements preparing which might in a remote futurity be adapted for it; whether, in fact, the primordial cell of such a kind of life could be now detected upon earth.  In the course of his work he answered this question in the affirmative and pointed to the higher machines.

“There is no security”—­to quote his own words—­“against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now.  A mollusc has not much consciousness.  Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing.  The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time.  Assume for the sake of argument that conscious beings have existed for some twenty million years:  see what strides machines have made in the last thousand!  May not the world last twenty million years longer?  If so, what will they not in the end become?  Is it not safer to nip the mischief in the bud and to forbid them further progress?

“But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind of consciousness?  Where does consciousness begin, and where end?  Who can draw the line?  Who can draw any line?  Is not everything interwoven with everything?  Is not machinery linked with animal life in an infinite variety of ways?  The shell of a hen’s egg is made of a delicate white ware and is a machine as much as an egg-cup is:  the shell is a device for holding the egg, as much as the egg-cup for holding the shell:  both are phases of the same function; the hen makes the shell in her inside, but it is pure pottery.  She makes her nest outside of herself for convenience’ sake, but the nest is not more of a machine than the egg-shell is.  A ‘machine’ is only a ‘device.’”

Then returning to consciousness, and endeavouring to detect its earliest manifestations, the writer continued:-

“There is a kind of plant that eats organic food with its flowers:  when a fly settles upon the blossom, the petals close upon it and hold it fast till the plant has absorbed the insect into its system; but they will close on nothing but what is good to eat; of a drop of rain or a piece of stick they will take no notice.  Curious! that so unconscious a thing should have such a keen eye to its own interest.  If this is unconsciousness, where is the use of consciousness?

“Shall we say that the plant does not know what it is doing merely because it has no eyes, or ears, or brains?  If we say that it acts mechanically, and mechanically only, shall we not be forced to admit that sundry other and apparently very deliberate actions are also mechanical?  If it seems to us that the plant kills and eats a fly mechanically, may it not seem to the plant that a man must kill and eat a sheep mechanically?