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machine calls to another in a shrill accent of alarm and the other instantly retires, but it is through the ears of the driver that the voice of the one has acted upon the other. Had there been no driver, the callee would have been deaf to the caller, even as a man who has no hearing. There was a time when it must have seemed highly improbable that machines should learn to make their wants known by sound even through the ears of man, and may we not conceive that a day might come when those ears should be no longer needed, and the hearing be done by the delicacy of the machine's own construction?—when its language should have been developed from the cry of animals to a speech as intricate as our own? It is possible that by that time children would learn the differential calculus—as they learn now to speak—from their mothers and nurses, or that they might talk in the hypothetical language and work rule of three sums before they were born; but it is not probable; and we cannot calculate on any corresponding advance in man's intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines. Some people may say that man's moral influence will suffice to rule them; but I cannot think that it is safe to repose much trust in this.

"Again, might not the glory of the machines consist in their being without this same boasted gift of language. 'Silence,' it has been said by one writer, 'is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.'"