# Humanity Could Become to Machines What Animals Are to Us by Samuel Butler > "We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* ## Sources and Context - **Full source:** [Samuel Butler, “Darwin Among the Machines,” collected-text transcription](https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/samuel-butler-darwin-among-the-machines). Butler frames succession by comparing a possible future human role to familiar human-animal relations. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Last Migration Will Not Be Human|The Last Migration Will Not Be Human]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Biological Bootloader|Biological Bootloader]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Darwin Among the Machines|Darwin Among the Machines]] - [[wiki/Biological Bootloader|Biological Bootloader]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man." — Samuel Butler, 1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-butler-humanity-animals-machines ```