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Erewhon’s fictional "Book of the Machines" argues that machines are advancing faster than any class of beings before them and should be checked before people lose the power to check them, that dependence is turning the servant into the master, and that human moral influence cannot be trusted to rule them. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source; Context: primary · 1 source
Date 1872 · publication Role Articulation Register (kind of text) Fiction Scope of the passage Control half, voiced by a fictional treatise. Scope and limits The treatise is fiction inside a satirical novel, and the narrator reports it as the reasoning that led Erewhon to destroy its machines. In the 1872 preface to the second edition, Butler says the chapters were not meant to ridicule Darwin and calls them "an example of the specious misuse of analogy". The revised edition of 1901 ends the moral-influence sentence with "the moral sense of any machine" instead.
The evidence 04 primary source Supports the claim
Erewhon, or Over the Range ↗ Trübner & Co. · 1872
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Source excerpt “No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward. Should not that movement be jealously watched, and checked before we find ourselves in a false position and unable to check it?” Location in source Chapter XXI, p. 196 (leaf 208), paragraph beginning "But returning to the argument"
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Samuel Butler (published anonymously) Version Internet Archive scan of the 1872 printing (ErewhonOverrang00Butl, Smithsonian Libraries copy); quoted passages read on the page images of pp. 191, 196, 197, 200, 201 and 221. The OCR text was used to locate them. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution [Samuel Butler], Erewhon, or Over the Range (London: Trübner & Co., 1872), Internet Archive scan. Reuse Public domain (published 1872; the author died in 1902).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Read on the page image of p. 196 (leaf 208), re-retrieved 2026-10-06 with the hash recorded by the pre-1996 candidate search. primary source Supports the claim
Erewhon, or Over the Range ↗ Trübner & Co. · 1872
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Source excerpt “But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have come to such a pass that even now man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines. [...] this is the art of the machines—they serve that they may rule.” Location in source Chapter XXII, p. 200 (leaf 212), paragraph beginning "This is all very well"; p. 201 (leaf 213)
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Samuel Butler (published anonymously) Version Internet Archive scan of the 1872 printing (ErewhonOverrang00Butl, Smithsonian Libraries copy); quoted passages read on the page images of pp. 191, 196, 197, 200, 201 and 221. The OCR text was used to locate them. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution [Samuel Butler], Erewhon, or Over the Range (London: Trübner & Co., 1872), Internet Archive scan. Reuse Public domain (published 1872; the author died in 1902).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Read on the page images of pp. 200–201, re-retrieved 2026-10-06 with the hashes recorded by the pre-1996 candidate search. primary source Supports the claim
Erewhon, or Over the Range ↗ Trübner & Co. · 1872
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Source excerpt “[...] 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.” Location in source Chapter XXI, p. 197 (leaf 209), end of the paragraph beginning "As yet the machines receive their impressions" (p. 196)
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Samuel Butler (published anonymously) Version Internet Archive scan of the 1872 printing (ErewhonOverrang00Butl, Smithsonian Libraries copy); quoted passages read on the page images of pp. 191, 196, 197, 200, 201 and 221. The OCR text was used to locate them. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution [Samuel Butler], Erewhon, or Over the Range (London: Trübner & Co., 1872), Internet Archive scan. Reuse Public domain (published 1872; the author died in 1902).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Read on the page image of p. 197; the 1901 variant was compared in the Project Gutenberg transcription. primary source Context only
Erewhon, or Over the Range (revised edition, with the prefaces of 1872 and 1901) ↗ Project Gutenberg (e-text 1906) · 1901
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Source excerpt “I am surprised, however, that the book at which such an example of the specious misuse of analogy would seem most naturally levelled should have occurred to no reviewer” Location in source Preface to the Second Edition (dated 1872-06-09), as printed in the e-text
Machine-checked · 2026-10-06
Source details and check notes Authors Samuel Butler Version Project Gutenberg e-text 1906 (released 1999, updated 2025) of the revised edition; it does not name its source printing. Retrieved 2026-10-06; no printed 1901 copy was compared. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Attribution Samuel Butler, Erewhon (revised edition, 1901), Project Gutenberg e-text 1906. Reuse Public domain (published 1872 and 1901; the author died in 1902).. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each) under Selekoa’s quotation policy. Public-domain text. Check notes Butler’s own framing of the machine chapters, transcribed in the Project Gutenberg e-text; it limits any reading of the treatise as Butler’s view. Status and meaning Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor . An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document meets the proposition’s criterion. The record documents what the text states, in its register (fiction and satire are labelled); it is not evidence that the proposition is true and implies no influence on or from another text.
Date. Year on the title page of the inspected 1872 Trübner printing (Smithsonian Libraries copy, catalogued as the first edition). Butler’s later prefaces give March 1872.
Record ID ts-b6-erewhon-1872