Page:Conservationofen00stew.djvu/176

160 calculability—the other by their incalculability. The one set, when at work, are not easily put wrong, while the other set are characterized by great delicacy of construction.

221. But perhaps the reader may object to our use of the rifle as an illustration.

For although it is undoubtedly a delicately-constructed machine, yet a rifle does not represent the same surpassing delicacy as that, for instance, which characterizes an egg balanced on its longer axis. Even if at full cock, and with a hair trigger, we may be perfectly certain it will not go off of its own accord. Although its object is to produce a sudden and violent transmutation of energy, yet this requires to be preceded by the application of an amount of energy, however small, to the trigger, and if this be not spent upon the rifle, it will not go off. There is, no doubt, delicacy of construction, but this has not risen to the height of incalculability, and it is only when in the hands of the sportsman that it becomes a machine upon the condition of which we cannot calculate.

Now, in making this remark, we define the position of the sportsman himself in the Universe of Energy, The rifle is delicately constructed, but not surpassingly so; but sportsman and rifle, together, form a machine of surpassing delicacy, ergo the sportsman himself is such a machine. We thus begin to perceive that a