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Updated: May 14, 2025
So we have given the poor animals over to the mechanical philosophy, and allowed them to be considered as only mere cunningly devised pieces of watch-work, if philosophy would only spare us, and our fine human souls, of which we are so proud, though they are doing all the wrong and folly they can from one week's end to the other.
Amos had not called to a boy named Jim to "bring Tartar over here, and look slippy." While Jim was bringing Tartar, who lived in a tub, and must therefore, Mr. Lenox said, be called in future Diogenes, Mr. Amos reminded them how much more likely one is to get good watch-work from a dog who is not of the highest breeding than from a prize-winner.
Yet, if once that equilibrium is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the object beheld.
Think of that, ye teachers of "penmanship in twelve lessons," and hide your diminished heads. John Marrot's engine, of which we have said much, and of which we mean to say still more, was not only a stupendous, but a complex creation. Its body consisted of above 5,400 pieces, all of which were almost as delicately fashioned, and put together with as much care, as watch-work.
Some of the pieces of brazen mechanism were very beautiful and delicate especially one piece, a stop-cock for letting water into a boiler, the various and complex parts of which, when contrasted with the huge workmanship of the other departments, resembled fine watch-work.
"Yes, my Lord, the action of the thing is absolutely certain, if the distance of the object aimed at be ascertained to a nicety, and the arrangements of the watch-work indicator adjusted to those of the eccentric wheel and the pneumatic engine with mathematical precision. This, of course, in these days of thorough education, can be easily done by even the youngest officer in a ship.
In the work of cutlers and locksmiths, in all the toys which are made of the coarser metals, and in all those goods which are commonly known by the name of Birmingham and Sheffield ware, there has been, during the same period, a very great reduction of price, though not altogether so great as in watch-work.
"You observe, my Lord," said I, pointing to my drawing, which lay spread out on the table, "that this watch-work arrangement in the heart of the machine is so intimately connected with that lever and screw on its exterior, that in passing out of the case from which it is launched into the sea, the machinery is set in motion, and the first act of the torpedo is to set or regulate itself for the special purpose for which it is designed.
Thus it may be styled an automatic torpedo. The celebrated Whitehead fish-torpedo, beautiful and cleverly contrived though it be, can only advance straight to its object at a certain depth below the surface; but mine, as you see, by this arrangement of the main pneumatic engine, which connects the watch-work regulator with an eccentric wheel or fin outside, causes the torpedo to describe a curve of any size, and in any direction, during its progress.
Swift ways of travel, by earth, sea, and air; machines for doing whatever the hand of man now does, so that we shall do all but put souls into our wheel-work and watch-work; the modes of making night into day; of getting control over the weather and the seasons; the virtues of plants, these are some of the easier things thou shalt help me do."
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