# Machines Serve So They May Rule by Samuel Butler > “True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery wherever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of the machines—they serve that they may rule.” > **— Samuel Butler**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV, “The Machines—continued”* ## Sources and Context - **Primary text:** [*Erewhon*, Chapter XXIV, Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1906/pg1906-images.html). This is the novel's anti-machine treatise speaking through a fictional Erewhonian professor. The supplied Batch 5 phrase capitalized “This” even though it is lower-case after a semicolon in the original; the full sentence above retains the source's capitalization and context. - Butler stages a substantive answering position in Chapter XXV that treats machines as extensions of human bodies; the treatise is not the novel's only voice. ## 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/The Next Interface Layer|The Next Interface Layer]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]] - [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]] - [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery wherever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of the machines—they serve that they may rule.” — Samuel Butler, Erewhon, 1872 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-butler-machines-serve-rule ```