Voices

Human nature is not a machine

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Read against the machine Biophysical soul

A delicate plant form on a worktable beside gears, calipers, and a mechanical blueprint.
Illustration generated with ChatGPT by OpenAI, prompted and selected by Greg Conrad Smith, 2026.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it.

–John Stuart Mill, On Liberty