The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  The commerce of the world would be subjected to a brutal transformation. Perhaps, in the long run, the immense growth of which it would be capable would be a benefit, but in the meantime, all traditions were going to be broken, all relationships altered, all commercial centers displaced, all customs and excises abolished—which would along the way kill off a vast number of industries incapable of supporting such an exaggeration of free exchange, compromising the finances of States and suppressing the earnings of numerous employees—not to mention the other industrial revolution that the employment of a new propulsion force for machines would bring in its wake, ruining all the existing factories.

  In sum, commerce and industry as presently constituted would, in the short term, be ruined from top to bottom, for the greater benefit of posterity—unless it turned out to be for its greater harm.

  It was not only material interests that were inclined to form a coalition against the invention. Political parties envisaged it with a dubious eye.

  The first impulse of liberals had been to applaud it excitedly. Was it not liberty itself, absolute, without possible hindrances, that it was bringing to the world? But they soon began wonder whether it might not, on the contrary, be a formidable instrument of tyranny. Peoples could not spend their lives in the air to escape the enterprises of despots, who might, on the contrary, organize aerial armies and absorb to their profit, by means of rigorous laws sanctioned by severe penalties, the monopoly of that kind of mobility.

  The attitude adopted by the inventor helped to make suspicion and antipathy prevail over sympathy. He had only spoken to the government with a deference that did not portend anything good; he seemed to be ready to surrender his secret to the government as soon as the latter had taken the measures necessary to secure a monopoly. He scarcely seemed to be preoccupied with turning it to the advantage of social liberty.

  Inverse fears held authoritarians and supporters of the government in suspense. Among them, however, were some who did not hesitate to see the invention as a satanic inspiration, ready to unleash the abomination of desolation upon the world, against which all the resources of human and divine lightning would not be effective.

  It was, understandably, a matter of a certain kind of Catholicism, of which there were several in that distant epoch. It could be admitted, strictly speaking, that governments and society might find, albeit with great difficulty, means of protecting themselves against material anarchy and exterior disorder. But healthy doctrines would be completely impotent to defend themselves against a much more redoubtable intellectual anarchy. Liberty of thought, liberty of expression, liberty of propaganda—demonic things—would have an invincible instrument. The printing press had not done a tenth of the damage that aerial locomotion would produce.

  It had been possible to erect protection, come what may, against the printing press so long as frontiers had existed and the possibility of policing, but what defense could there be against the free exchange of ideas operating through the air even more easily than the free exchange of merchandise? The congregation of the Index, the inquisition, the repression of the sins of the press and the regulation of the printing profession would no longer be anything but rusted weapons, curiosities for antiquaries, as impotent against free thought as Greek and Roman shields against machine gun fire.

  What good would it do to anathematize those liberties vomited forth from Hell? One might as well anathematize the freedom to walk, while humans had legs. The force of circumstance that would prevail against the most solemn excommunications and religion was doomed, unless the aerial navigator was the Antichrist in person and his invention abounded the end of the world, which would not be surprising.

  The members of the clergy were all the more inclined to abandon themselves to these sentiments because the anonymous inventor was suspected of being a miscreant, in accordance with certain circumstances observed through the magnifying glass of prejudice. Thus, he had always decided, without any necessity, to choose Sunday for his public experiments, testifying thereby that he was not only unconcerned about neglecting his own religious duties but about deflecting others therefrom. And indeed, it was the case that year that the first of June, the day of the manifestation, was the feast of Pentecost, to which he had not even made any allusion in his announcement. He had not solicited for his ship the blessings of the Church, nor reserved a place for any of its dignitaries, as he had done for the government, for science, and even journalism.

  Also interpreted as evil was the casual fashion, judged irreverent, in which he had once made use of one of the lightning conductors of Notre Dame as a seat, while smoking a cigar. They were evidently dealing with a freethinker. They ought not to hesitate to consider him as an enemy, and his discovery as a scourge.

  To all that was added certain sentiments that were scarcely admissible, and to which no one confessed, but which contributed nonetheless, clandestinely, to reinforce the various causes of dread and antipathy.

  Some people were offended by the anonymity maintained by the inventor; he was reproached for flirting with glory, like a young woman with amour, and of haggling excessively over his revelations. Some begrudged the fact that no one could succeed in discovering his secret, in spite of the assiduous research to which scientists, inventors and industrial practitioners devoted to the problem, with varying degrees of secrecy; they felt humiliated by the crushing superiority of which the unknown individual maintained for himself.

  So much power in the hands of one man, who seemed to hold the destiny of the world in his hands alone, had the weight of a usurpation. No one any longer possessed any importance that was not eclipsed by his. Alone, he absorbed the attention of the world.

  In spite of all that, no one dared openly to oppose public sentiment, in which admiration held sway over everything else. The spectacles offered to it had produced too profound an impression. People proceeded by means of insinuation. The probable consequences of the invention were studied from all points of view, and there was no mistaking their grandeur.

  Nevertheless, there was an accumulation of ifs and buts, objections and apprehensions. The public admiration was mingled with a veritable fear. The more one thought about it, the more impossible it seemed to anticipate the directions in which the world would hasten. Would it not race to its ruin? Was not the reign of violence about to recommence, this time worse than in the darkest days of the Middle Ages? Was not humanity on the brink of sinking into a frightful chaos?

  The aerial navigator took no part in this polemic. The Universel, however, all of whose reporters were animated by a profound faith, valiantly stood up to the declared and undeclared adversaries of the great discovery. It unmasked the hidden interests that tried to strike a breach in it.

  It won its cause with the majority of liberals by demonstrating to them that only progress could come of it, and that no power in the world would be capable of confiscating it to its own profit once it was divulged. It forced the extremist clergy to declare their opposition openly and give their reasons, which were greeted with mediocre favor. It proclaimed, sustained and defended against everyone the axiom that evil never emerges from good, disaster from progress or catastrophe from invention. By virtue of the simple fact, it said, that God inspires a man with the idea of a great discovery, we ought to accept it with as much faith as gratitude, certain as it is in human destiny that all progress is a new source of wellbeing and happiness.

  One of its articles provoked a bizarre response. That response came from a newspaper whose editor-in-chief was the most eccentric in the entire Parisian press, treating all subjects in a paradoxical spirit and sustaining, to the great amusement of the public, the most absurd theses—without ever, admittedly, conquering a disciple, but slipping beneath refutation with such dexterity that he always had the last word and always invariably attracted the facetious to his side.

  This is the article that he published on aerial locomotion.

  XI. Paradox

  Aerial locomotion doe
s not exist.

  It does not exist because it is impossible.

  Let no one tell me that they have seen the aerial navigator and his ship. That is not the issue.

  I, too, have seen them. That is only a fact, and what is a fact?

  Nothing.

  What is logic?

  Everything.

  Now, logic always has a starting point and a conclusion.

  The starting point is that human beings, having no wings, have not been created to fly.

  The conclusion is that aerial locomotion does not exist.

  All those who have sought means of steering balloons were insane, or at least people who were not using their reason.

  It they had been using their reason, they would not have striven to search for something that can be demonstrated a priori to be indiscoverable.

  And one does not even need, for that, the demonstrations of science.

  Science says, and the simplest mechanical common sense agrees, that the propulsion to be given to aerial vehicles necessitates a force out of all proportion to those that humans can transport into the air.

  Mathematically, one can say:

  The motive force must be to the vehicle, balloon or other, akin to the combined force of the two wings of a bird, which cannot fly with one alone.

  If one measures the force of a bird’s wings, compared with its dimensions and its weight, and deduces therefrom the number of horsepower of force that a steam engine would require to move a vehicle through the air, one arrives at the impossible. And that impossibility is increased by the necessity of giving the vehicle dimensions sufficient to carry the machine itself with its provision of water and fuel.

  As for getting rid of the engine and seeking such in the action of the air itself, where there is no point of support, that is simply insane.

  But those are the demonstrations of science and common sense. I have no need of them.

  People will tell me that they apply to balloons and steam engines, and that the aerial navigator moves with neither a steam engine nor a balloon.

  I respond that aerial locomotion is demonstrably impossible a priori.

  Human beings are bound to the earth by their conformation. They can invent means of locomotion that do not cause them to quit the earth, but not others.

  If they have ships, that is because they are conformed in such a way as to be able to swim.

  As for moving in the air, that is not in their conformation. Thus, it is not in their destiny.

  The proof of that is that if aerial locomotion existed, the conditions of human existence would necessarily be other than they are.

  Now, they cannot change.

  Thus, aerial locomotion does not exist.

  It has been demonstrated that there would be no more frontiers. Perhaps frontiers are a bad thing, but they are a necessity. Humans, being sociable, need to group together. Hence there are nations. Without nations, there is no humankind.

  There would be no more government. Now, it is necessary that humans be governed. It is a law that one might regret, but it is an essential law constitutive of civilized humanity.

  There would be no more police. Thus, there would be absolute reign of violence. Everything would go to the strongest.

  The weak would only have the resource of flight. But what would become of labor? Labor is incompatible with perpetual flight?

  And without labor, there would be no human existence, in the same way that without police, there would be no social existence.

  Neither the weak nor the strong would toil, because there would always be someone stronger to steal its rewards.

  Humans would be transformed into birds of prey.

  Hence, the absence of the most essential conditions of all social existence: labor and protection.

  Let the Universel tell us how it understands that people will be able to defend themselves against brigandage.

  It will paint us a picture of an aerial gendarmerie, and, on the ground, houses with all windows barred, equipped with formidable artillery, unless they are buried fifty feet underground.

  Is that kind of architecture in human destiny?

  And even then, it would be difficult for a flying gendarmerie and the fortifications of farms to prevent an ox being picked up in Normandy and taken to be cooked in America.

  Policing the seas is already not easy. It has required centuries to put an end to piracy and the slave trade. And then, they have not been ended completely.

  Policing the seas is, however, merely difficult.

  Policing the air would be utterly impossible.

  How will the Universel prevent a gang of mercenaries from arriving one night from China or Argentina and demanding a contribution to their subsistence on pain of immediate bombardment?

  How will it prevent slave traders from abducting black men from the shores of Africa and white men from the shores of Provence?

  Aerial locomotion would demand a tangle of draconian laws and an organization of public force of which we have no idea, and which would still be impotent.

  Hence, no more liberty. Now, liberty is one of the essential conditions of human existence.

  Does the Universel suppose that with such a disaggregating facility of locomotion, any vestige would long subsist of marriage the family, the hearth and the little domestic virtue that we have left?

  Man would soon be no more than a male, a woman a female, and the human species, impotent to set foot upon the earth, devoid of family, devoid of property, with no other law than force, would rapidly degenerate toward animality.

  Others have enumerated all the consequences, certain or probable, of aerial locomotion. Some have concluded that it has a splendid future in store for us, others a redoubtable one, but which, in the opinion of all, will transform the world.

  The premises are correct. The conclusion is not.

  Splendid if you like, that future would surpass the destiny of human beings, to whom it is no more given to transform the conditions of their existence than to steal the fire of heaven.

  Redoubtable in my view, it would lead to the final cataclysm of humanity.

  All the consequences of aerial locomotion, anticipated or possible to anticipate, are in manifest contradiction with the fundamental conditions of all civilization.

  Now, civilization does not accommodate contradictions.

  It admits progress, but in the sense of the development of that which it has created.

  It does not admit progress in a contradictory direction.

  The conclusion to be drawn from these premises is not in the search for the consequences that aerial locomotion will produce.

  The conclusion is that aerial locomotion does not exist.

  And I predict that we shall hear no more talk of the aerial navigator, for he has only had a dream, and the whole world with him.

  If he has the audacity to reappear, he will be transported into space with his secret, which no one will ever rediscover, because he cannot exist, and, in consequence, does not exist.

  The fact is nothing.

  Logic is everything.

  XII. The Voyage Around the World

  Understandably, the Universel did not even take the trouble to reply to such a perfectly absurd article, which concluded with the ridiculous denial of a fact that the entire world had seen. As for the government, it had not made any contribution to the polemic, which it had allowed to develop at its ease, understanding that the more it was freely debated, the more it would be enlightened.

  Fundamentally, it was perplexed.

  There was then at its head, without their being any particular necessity to say exactly what its form was at the time, a man unintoxicated by his situation. He had not been ambitious for power. His simple tastes made it a burden for him, which he would gladly have resigned. Although liberal by temperament, he had formed his own idea of government authority. He considered it as a despotism that it was not permissible for him to lessen, even to the profit of ideas with which he symp
athized. As a simple citizen, he could have demanded, with more or less insistence, various concessions. As Head of State, his ideas were no different, and the exercise of authority had nothing seductive about it in his eyes, but he believed conscientiously that his responsibility required him to make no concessions. Imagine him as a Washington, depositary of the power of the Great Turk, which he had sworn to transmit intact to those who came after him. Liberal by sentiment and in his ideas, he treated liberty almost as an enemy.

  Now he asked himself what the new invention would mean for government authority.

  It was quite evident that if it were to be vulgarized without any precaution being taken, government authority would not merely be lessened but obliterated.

  To prevent the invention being produced was out of the question. First of all, they did not have the inventor. Even if they had him, murdering him might not kill his secret; he might have taken precautions in order not to take it to his grave if death took him by surprise.

  There was only one possible decision to take: to buy the secret and reserve the monopoly thereon.

  But that was not easy to do.

  Even assuming that one could reach an understanding with the inventor on the conditions of the cession, it would be necessary to take a certain number of people into confidence. It would at least be necessary to make the method known to whomever took command of an aerial ship. Even if one chose the most honorable of men and demanded the most solemn oaths of secrecy from them, a State secret with such a considerable number of confidants would soon be divulged regardless.

  Was it not probable, in any case, that some new inventor would end up discovering in his turn what the first had discovered?

  Vulgarization seemed inevitable, except by suppressing the discovery itself, something evidently impossible. Now, vulgarization was the upheaval of all social organization and the obliteration of all government.