Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic ModificationButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification
Butler, Samuel
Evolution; Natural selection
Tools of the fourth degree are made by those of the third, second, and
first. They consist of the simpler compound instruments that yet require
to be worked by hand, as hammers, spades, and even hand flour-mills.
Tools of the fifth degree are made by the help of those of the fourth,
third, second, and first. They are compounded of many tools, worked, it
may be, by steam or water and requiring no constant contact with the
body.
But each one of these tools of the fifth degree was made in the first
instance by the sole instrumentality of the four preceding kinds of tool.
They must all be linked on to protoplasm, which is the one original
tool-maker, but which can only make the tools that are more remote from
itself by the help of those that are nearer, that is to say, it can only
work when it has suitable tools to work with, and when it is allowed to
use them in its own way. There can be no direct communication between
protoplasm and a steam-engine; there may be and often is direct
communication between machines of even the fifth order and those of the
first, as when an engine-man turns a cock, or repairs something with his
own hands if he has nothing better to work with. But put a hammer, for
example, to a piece of protoplasm, and the protoplasm will no more know
what to do with it than we should be able to saw a piece of wood in two
without a saw. Even protoplasm from the hand of a carpenter who has been
handling hammers all his life would be hopelessly put off its stroke if
not allowed to work in its usual way but put bare up against a hammer; it
would make a slimy mess and then dry up; still there can be no doubt (so
at least those who uphold protoplasm as the one living substance would
say) that the closer a machine can be got to protoplasm and the more
permanent the connection, the more living it appears to be, or at any
rate the more does it appear to be endowed with spontaneous and reasoning
energy, so long, of course, as the closeness is of a kind which
protoplasm understands and is familiar with. This, they say, is why we
do not like using any implement or tool with gloves on, for these impose
a barrier between the tool and its true connection with protoplasm by
means of the nervous system. For the same reason we put gloves on when
we box so as to bar the connection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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