This brings us to our second point. Just as no true machine is purposeless, so no true machine is self-acting. Not only are all machines in the end the product of designing intelligence, but all machines are dependent upon external purposive intelligence for control. They require intelligence to set them going, and they require it equally, in one form or another, to regulate and supervise their working. However complicated a piece of machinery may be, however intricate its provisions for self-regulation, self-adjustment, self-feeding, and so forth, there is always, if you look carefully enough, a man somewhere to work it. The obvious character of this reflection has unfortunately not prevented metaphysicians from drawing strange inferences from their own neglect of it. Closer reflection upon the true character of machinery would thus suggest a very different interpretation of the analogy between the uniformities of the physical order and the regular working of our machines from that adopted by the “mechanical” view of nature, as elaborated into a metaphysical doctrine. It would lead us to conceive of the apparently mechanical as playing everywhere the same part which it fulfils in our own system of social life. We should think of the mechanical as filling an indispensable but subordinate place in processes which, in their complete character, are essentially teleological and purposive. Teleological action obviously depends for its success upon two fundamental conditions. It requires the establishment of types of reaction which remain uniform so long as their maintenance satisfies the attainment of the end towards which they are directed, and at the same time the power of modifying those types of reaction from time to time so as to meet fresh situations encountered or created in the progressive attainment of that end. In our own individual physical life these two conditions are found as the power to form habits, and the power to initiate spontaneously fresh response to variation in the environment. In so far as our dominant interests can be best followed by the uniform repetition of one type of reaction, attention is diverted from the execution of the reaction which becomes habitual, semi-conscious, and, as we correctly say, “mechanical,” the attention being thus set free for the work of initiating the necessary fresh modifications of habitual action. Our various industrial and other machines are devices for facilitating this same division of labour. The machine, once properly constructed and set in action, executes the habitual reaction, leaving the attention of its supervisor free to introduce the requisite relatively novel variations of response according to new situations in the environment.