The Magnifying Mirror: On Governing the Talking Machine

When this talking machine came down upon people and spread through offices, markets and schools, I saw them split into two camps, both past the mark. The first surrendered to it as though powerless, handing it their opinion and their conscience, until they quoted it without understanding and argued from it without discernment. The second fled from it, taking backwardness for piety, and was denied both its benefit and an understanding of its own time. And I saw the people of truth in the middle, between the zealot and the deserter: they take the gift and know the price, and they seek its help without relying on it.

So I set out to gather on this matter principles to return to and manners to follow, to keep the taker from excess and the refuser from neglect. And since jurisprudence is the most exact method the scholars devised for grounding questions, the soundest in structure and the truest in returning branches to their roots, I wove the book on its pattern: a sermon that opens each chapter, questions to settle, cautions to heed, and comprehensive rules that spare the listing of every case. I did not mean by this an affected craft or an imitation of wording. I meant to give the new matter the standing of what people have long practiced, for the mind is at home with familiar methods even when an unfamiliar question descends on it.

I made the whole book turn on one idea that returns in every chapter in some form: that this machine is a magnifying mirror, not a creator. It shows what is in its user and multiplies it, and it does not put in him what is not there. Whoever governs himself, it governs well for him; whoever neglects himself, it neglects him in turn.