-THE END-
Ambrose Bierce's short story: Moxon's master
"Are you serious?--do you really believe that a machine thinks?"
I got no immediate reply; Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals
in the grate, touching them deftly here and there with the fire-poker
till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For
several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in
answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air,
however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one
might have said that he had "something on his mind."
Presently he said:
"What is a 'machine'? The word has been variously defined. Here is
one definition from a popular dictionary: 'Any instrument or
organization by which power is applied and made effective, or a
desired effect produced.' Well, then, is not a man a machine? And
you will admit that he thinks--or thinks he thinks."
"If you do not wish to answer my question," I said, rather testily,
"why not say so?--all that you say is mere evasion. You know well
enough that when I say 'machine' I do not mean a man, but something
that man has made and controls."
"When it does not control him," he said, rising abruptly and looking
out of a window, whence nothing was visible in the blackness of a
stormy night. A moment later he turned about and with a smile said:
"I beg your pardon; I had no thought of evasion. I considered the
dictionary man's unconscious testimony suggestive and worth something
in the discussion. I can give your question a direct answer easily
enough: I do believe that a machine thinks about the work that it is
doing."
That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether pleasing,
for it tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon's devotion to
study and work in his machine-shop had not been good for him. I
knew, for one thing, that he suffered from insomnia, and that is no
light affliction. Had it affected his mind? His reply to my
question seemed to me then evidence that it had; perhaps I should
think differently about it now. I was younger then, and among the
blessings that are not denied to youth is ignorance. Incited by that
great stimulant to controversy, I said:
"And what, pray, does it think with--in the absence of a brain?"
The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took his
favorite form of counter-interrogation:
"With what does a plant think--in the absence of a brain?"
"Ah, plants also belong to the philosopher class! I should be
pleased to know some of their conclusions; you may omit the
premises."
"Perhaps," he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish irony,
"you may be able to infer their convictions from their acts. I will
spare you the familiar examples of the sensitive mimosa, the several
insectivorous flowers and those whose stamens bend down and shake
their pollen upon the entering bee in order that he may fertilize
their distant mates. But observe this. In an open spot in my garden
I planted a climbing vine. When it was barely above the surface I
set a stake into the soil a yard away. The vine at once made for it,
but as it was about to reach it after several days I removed it a few
feet. The vine at once altered its course, making an acute angle,
and again made for the stake. This manoeuvre was repeated several
times, but finally, as if discouraged, the vine abandoned the pursuit
and ignoring further attempts to divert it traveled to a small tree,
further away, which it climbed.
"Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly in search
of moisture. A well-known horticulturist relates that one entered an
old drain pipe and followed it until it came to a break, where a
section of the pipe had been removed to make way for a stone wall
that had been built across its course. The root left the drain and
followed the wall until it found an opening where a stone had fallen
out. It crept through and following the other side of the wall back
to the drain, entered the unexplored part and resumed its journey."
"And all this?"
"Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the consciousness of
plants. It proves that they think."
"Even if it did--what then? We were speaking, not of plants, but of
machines. They may be composed partly of wood--wood that has no
longer vitality--or wholly of metal. Is thought an attribute also of
the mineral kingdom?"
"How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of
crystallization?"
"I do not explain them."
"Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to deny, namely,
intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the
crystals. When soldiers form lines, or hollow squares, you call it
reason. When wild geese in flight take the form of a letter V you
say instinct. When the homogeneous atoms of a mineral, moving freely
in solution, arrange themselves into shapes mathematically perfect,
or particles of frozen moisture into the symmetrical and beautiful
forms of snowflakes, you have nothing to say. You have not even
invented a name to conceal your heroic unreason."
Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness. As he
paused I heard in an adjoining room known to me as his "machine-
shop," which no one but himself was permitted to enter, a singular
thumping sound, as of some one pounding upon a table with an open
hand. Moxon heard it at the same moment and, visibly agitated, rose
and hurriedly passed into the room whence it came. I thought it odd
that any one else should be in there, and my interest in my friend--
with doubtless a touch of unwarrantable curiosity--led me to listen
intently, though, I am happy to say, not at the keyhole. There were
confused sounds, as of a struggle or scuffle; the floor shook. I
distinctly heard hard breathing and a hoarse whisper which said "Damn
you!" Then all was silent, and presently Moxon reappeared and said,
with a rather sorry smile:
"Pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there
that lost its temper and cut up rough."
Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by
four parallel excoriations showing blood, I said:
"How would it do to trim its nails?"
I could have spared myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but
seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the
interrupted monologue as if nothing had occurred:
"Doubtless you do not hold with those (I need not name them to a man
of your reading) who have taught that all matter is sentient, that
every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. _I_ do. There is
no such thing as dead, inert matter: it is all alive; all instinct
with force, actual and potential; all sensitive to the same forces in
its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and
subtler ones residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought
into relation with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an
instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and
purpose--more of them in proportion to the complexity of the
resulting machine and that of its work.
"Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer's definition of 'Life'? I
read it thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward, for
anything I know, but in all that time I have been unable to think of
a single word that could profitably be changed or added or removed.
It seems to me not only the best definition, but the only possible
one.
"'Life,' he says, 'is a definite combination of heterogeneous
changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with
external coexistences and sequences.'"
"That defines the phenomenon," I said, "but gives no hint of its
cause."
"That," he replied, "is all that any definition can do. As Mill
points out, we know nothing of cause except as an antecedent--nothing
of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never
occurs without another, which is dissimilar: the first in point of
time we call cause, the second, effect. One who had many times seen
a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs
otherwise, would think the rabbit the cause of the dog.
"But I fear," he added, laughing naturally enough, "that my rabbit is
leading me a long way from the track of my legitimate quarry: I'm
indulging in the pleasure of the chase for its own sake. What I want
you to observe is that in Herbert Spencer's definition of 'life' the
activity of a machine is included--there is nothing in the definition
that is not applicable to it. According to this sharpest of
observers and deepest of thinkers, if a man during his period of
activity is alive, so is a machine when in operation. As an inventor
and constructor of machines I know that to be true."
Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the fire. It
was growing late and I thought it time to be going, but somehow I did
not like the notion of leaving him in that isolated house, all alone
except for the presence of some person of whose nature my conjectures
could go no further than that it was unfriendly, perhaps malign.
Leaning toward him and looking earnestly into his eyes while making a
motion with my hand through the door of his workshop, I said:
"Moxon, whom have you in there?"
Somewhat to my surprise he laughed lightly and answered without
hesitation:
"Nobody; the incident that you have in mind was caused by my folly in
leaving a machine in action with nothing to act upon, while I
undertook the interminable task of enlightening your understanding.
Do you happen to know that Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm?"
"O bother them both!" I replied, rising and laying hold of my
overcoat. "I'm going to wish you good night; and I'll add the hope
that the machine which you inadvertently left in action will have her
gloves on the next time you think it needful to stop her."
Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot I left the house.
Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond
the crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along precarious
plank sidewalks and across miry, unpaved streets I could see the
faint glow of the city's lights, but behind me nothing was visible
but a single window of Moxon's house. It glowed with what seemed to
me a mysterious and fateful meaning. I knew it was an uncurtained
aperture in my friend's "machine-shop," and I had little doubt that
he had resumed the studies interrupted by his duties as my instructor
in mechanical consciousness and the fatherhood of Rhythm. Odd, and
in some degree humorous, as his convictions seemed to me at that
time, I could not wholly divest myself of the feeling that they had
some tragic relation to his life and character--perhaps to his
destiny--although I no longer entertained the notion that they were
the vagaries of a disordered mind. Whatever might be thought of his
views, his exposition of them was too logical for that. Over and
over, his last words came back to me: "Consciousness is the creature
of Rhythm." Bald and terse as the statement was, I now found it
infinitely alluring. At each recurrence it broadened in meaning and
deepened in suggestion. Why, here, (I thought) is something upon
which to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of
rhythm all things ARE conscious, for all have motion, and all motion
is rhythmic. I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth
of his thought--the scope of this momentous generalization; or had he
arrived at his philosophic faith by the tortuous and uncertain road
of observation?
That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon's expounding had failed
to make me a convert; but now it seemed as if a great light shone
about me, like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus; and out there in
the storm and darkness and solitude I experienced what Lewes calls
"The endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought." I
exulted in a new sense of knowledge, a new pride of reason. My feet
seemed hardly to touch the earth; it was as if I were uplifted and
borne through the air by invisible wings.
Yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him whom I now
recognized as my master and guide, I had unconsciously turned about,
and almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at
Moxon's door. I was drenched with rain, but felt no discomfort.
Unable in my excitement to find the doorbell I instinctively tried
the knob. It turned and, entering, I mounted the stairs to the room
that I had so recently left. All was dark and silent; Moxon, as I
had supposed, was in the adjoining room--the "machine-shop." Groping
along the wall until I found the communicating door I knocked loudly
several times, but got no response, which I attributed to the uproar
outside, for the wind was blowing a gale and dashing the rain against
the thin walls in sheets. The drumming upon the shingle roof
spanning the unceiled room was loud and incessant.
I had never been invited into the machine-shop--had, indeed, been
denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception, a skilled
metal worker, of whom no one knew anything except that his name was
Haley and his habit silence. But in my spiritual exaltation,
discretion and civility were alike forgotten and I opened the door.
What I saw took all philosophical speculation out of me in short
order.
Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table upon which a
single candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him,
his back toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two
was a chessboard; the men were playing. I knew little of chess, but
as only a few pieces were on the board it was obvious that the game
was near its close. Moxon was intensely interested--not so much, it
seemed to me, in the game as in his antagonist, upon whom he had
fixed so intent a look that, standing though I did directly in the
line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved. His face was
ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. Of his
antagonist I had only a back view, but that was sufficient; I should
not have cared to see his face.
He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions
suggesting those of a gorilla--a tremendous breadth of shoulders,
thick, short neck and broad, squat head, which had a tangled growth
of black hair and was topped with a crimson fez. A tunic of the same
color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat--apparently a
box--upon which he sat; his legs and feet were not seen. His left
forearm appeared to rest in his lap; he moved his pieces with his
right hand, which seemed disproportionately long.
I had shrunk back and now stood a little to one side of the doorway
and in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his
opponent he could have observed nothing now, except that the door was
open. Something forbade me either to enter or to retire, a feeling--
I know not how it came--that I was in the presence of an imminent
tragedy and might serve my friend by remaining. With a scarcely
conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act I remained.
The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making
his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most
convenient to his hand, his motions in doing so being quick, nervous
and lacking in precision. The response of his antagonist, while
equally prompt in the inception, was made with a slow, uniform,
mechanical and, I thought, somewhat theatrical movement of the arm,
that was a sore trial to my patience. There was something unearthly
about it all, and I caught myself shuddering. But I was wet and
cold.
Two or three times after moving a piece the stranger slightly
inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his
king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb. And
then that he was a machine--an automaton chess-player! Then I
remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a
piece of mechanism, though I did not understand that it had actually
been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and
intelligence of machines merely a prelude to eventual exhibition of
this device--only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical
action upon me in my ignorance of its secret?
A fine end, this, of all my intellectual transports--my "endless
variety and excitement of philosophic thought!" I was about to
retire in disgust when something occurred to hold my curiosity. I
observed a shrug of the thing's great shoulders, as if it were
irritated: and so natural was this--so entirely human--that in my
new view of the matter it startled me. Nor was that all, for a
moment later it struck the table sharply with its clenched hand. At
that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I: he pushed his
chair a little backward, as in alarm.
Presently Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the
board, pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrow-hawk and with
the exclamation "checkmate!" rose quickly to his feet and stepped
behind his chair. The automaton sat motionless.
The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and
progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses
between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which,
like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It
seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a
whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered
mechanism which had escaped the repressive and regulating action of
some controlling part--an effect such as might be expected if a pawl
should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I
had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken
by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but
continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and
head it shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion
augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent
agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and with a movement almost
too quick for the eye to follow shot forward across table and chair,
with both arms thrust forth to their full length--the posture and
lunge of a diver. Moxon tried to throw himself backward out of
reach, but he was too late: I saw the horrible thing's hands close
upon his throat, his own clutch its wrists. Then the table was
overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all
was black dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully
distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds
made by the strangled man's efforts to breathe. Guided by the
infernal hubbub, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had hardly
taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a
blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory a
vivid picture of the combatants on the floor, Moxon underneath, his
throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced
backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue
thrust out; and--horrible contrast!--upon the painted face of his
assassin an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the
solution of a problem in chess! This I observed, then all was
blackness and silence.
Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the
memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain
recognized in my attendant Moxon's confidential workman, Haley.
Responding to a look he approached, smiling.
"Tell me about it," I managed to say, faintly--"all about it."
"Certainly," he said; "you were carried unconscious from a burning
house--Moxon's. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have
to do a little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit
mysterious, too. My own notion is that the house was struck by
lightning."
"And Moxon?"
"Buried yesterday--what was left of him."
Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion.
When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick he was affable
enough. After some moments of the keenest mental suffering I
ventured to ask another question:
"Who rescued me?"
"Well, if that interests you--I did."
"Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue,
also, that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess-player
that murdered its inventor?"
The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he
turned and gravely said:
"Do you know that?"
"I do," I replied; "I saw it done."
That was many years ago. If asked to-day I should answer less
confidently.
-THE END-
Ambrose Bierce's short story: Moxon's master
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