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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THE FUTURE
OF HUMANITY AND ITS SUCCESSORS

Are Cyborgs Persons?

An Account of Futurist Ethics
Aleksandra Łukaszewicz Alcaraz
Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity
and its Successors

Series Editors
Calvin Mercer
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC, USA

Steve Fuller
Department of Sociology
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Humanity is at a crossroads in its history, precariously poised between
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Successors, please contact Phil Getz, Editor, Religion & Philosophy: phil.
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http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14587
 Aleksandra Łukaszewicz Alcaraz

Are Cyborgs Persons?

An Account of Futurist Ethics
Aleksandra Łukaszewicz Alcaraz
Academy of Art in Szczecin
Szczecin, Poland

Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors

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 Foreword

Cyborg Persons: Humanity Played in a Different Key

Although much has been written about cyborgs for the past forty years,
especially in light of Donna Haraway’s 1985 Socialist Review piece, ‘A
Manifesto for Cyborgs,’ Aleksandra Lukaszewicz Alcaraz’s Are Cyborg
Persons? is arguably the first book to consider cyborgs understood as a lit-
eral reality from a broad philosophical standpoint. It is often forgotten
that when Haraway invoked ‘cyborgs’ in her famous manifesto, she meant
it as an extended metaphor for her vision of feminists reappropriating sci-
ence and technology for their own emancipatory purposes. The power of
her rhetoric was felt at the time because many feminists had seen science
and technology as the ultimate enemy to their cause. Yet most of Haraway’s
references to cyborgs were from science fiction, not science fact. Moreover,
as the years have passed, Haraway has distanced herself increasingly from
any literal reading of cyborgs, which she believes could result in a stealth
‘re-masculinization,’ as in the case of (so she says) contemporary transhu-
manism. Nowadays one needs to turn to Katherine Hayles for sustained
interpretations of the cyborg as an emergent cultural phenomenon.
Lukaszewicz Alcaraz’s distinctive contribution is a systematic investigation
into the ontological location of the cyborg. Her discussions of Charles
Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and Joseph Margolis’ historicist understanding
of personhood provide strong clues in that direction, which are greatly
enhanced by something not normally found in a philosophical work,
namely interviews with several high-profile people who have become

v
vi FOREWORD

cyborgs in the name of art, science, and politics. In what follows, I focus
especially on Neil Harbisson as part of general framing of how the cyborg
might be seen as the ‘hopeful monster’ capable of thinking about what it
means to be human altogether.
It is now well-known that ‘cyborg’ is a contraction of ‘cybernetic organ-
ism.’ The vision behind the word was that of cybernetics founder, the
mathematician Norbert Wiener, who believed that the classic metaphysical
dichotomy of ‘natural’ versus ‘artificial’—or its modern version, ‘organ-
ism’ versus ‘machine’—can be regarded as alternative realizations of a
common set of mathematical equations. Those equations specify the con-
ditions under which an entity remains in equilibrium with its environ-
ment—or ‘retains its autonomy,’ metaphysically speaking. Here
‘equilibrium’ should be understood in dynamic terms, relative to how the
entity adjusts the pursuit of its ends in light of a changing environment.
Stated so simply, cybernetics was open to the reductio ad absurdum that
organisms, including humans, are basically glorified thermostats.
(Nevertheless, the late analytic philosopher Fred Dretske designed an
entire theory of knowledge around that idea.) The rise of ‘second-order
cybernetics,’ popularly known as ‘autopoiesis,’ is meant to respond to that
objection. Here we are to imagine cybernetic systems that manage to
immunize themselves from extinction by developing a capacity to shift
fundamentally their rules of engagement with the environment without
losing a sense of identity with their previous incarnations.
This last point is worth bearing in mind when thinking about whether
cyborgs are simply enhanced humans or something other than human. In
the balance hangs the difference between, respectively, the transhuman
and the posthuman. How the matter is decided depends on whether the
relevant ‘sense of identity’ is maintained as one undergoes some sort of
‘cyborganization.’ But before proceeding further, it is worth recalling that
this is not how Wiener’s original audience thought about the matter. They
were more focused on his main example: the behavioral synchronization
of Cold War military aircraft and its human pilot, courtesy of a properly
designed interface, or ‘dashboard,’ that enabled their integration into a
single operating unit. In the late 1940s, this unified perspective of human
and machine started a radical shift from the image of, say, Charles
Lindbergh, whose heroic solo transatlantic air crossing only twenty years
earlier was widely portrayed as demonstrating mastery of both an uncer-
tain technology and an uncertain nature. Wiener’s neologism of ‘cyber-
netics’ makes sense in this context. It etymologically recalls the human
 FOREWORD vii

pilot’s relationship to a ‘ship’—in this case, an air rather than a sea vessel.
So, in what sense can a cyborg be understood as possessing ‘person-
hood’—perhaps even as in the case of Wiener’s synchronized aircraft,
inheriting the personhood of its human pilot?
At the outset, it is useless to think in terms of cyborgs as either the next
stage of human evolution or a stage of evolution that goes beyond the
human, which is how transhumanists and posthumanists, respectively,
tend to understand cyborgs. There is a genuinely open question about
what it will mean to be ‘human’ in the future, and the existence of cyborgs
provides a genuinely open space for considering the matter. At a strictly
biological level, neither Lamarckians nor Darwinians hold that Homo
Sapiens—or any other species—evolves. Only life itself evolves, and species
are simply the conventional names we give to space-time slices of that
evolutionary process. Even at the genetic level, there is no clear cut-off
point between the ‘human’ and the ‘non-human.’ In this respect, modern
evolutionary theory is indifferent to the trans/posthuman interpretations
of ‘cyborg.’ Indeed, ‘human evolution’ is itself a social scientific turn of
phrase that owes more to Enlightenment doctrines of progress than any-
thing specifically from biology. However, it does not follow that the quest
for the relevant ‘sense of identity’ is mysterious or even very futuristic. In
fact, it is no more than a revamped statement of John Locke’s 300+-year-­
old definition of personal identity in chapter twenty-seven of the Essay
Concerning Human Understanding.
Locke discussed personal identity in terms of the backward extension of
consciousness. He is nowadays read as meaning an individual remember-
ing his or her past, which in turn informs how s/he experiences the world
now. Philosophers routinely call Locke’s approach ‘psychological,’ but he
was really talking about something much more abstract, which he himself
called a ‘rational being.’ Indeed, Locke went so far as to call personhood
as a ‘forensic’ quality, namely one related to accountability, which has both
a private and public character. I can feel accountable by identifying with
some past event or action, and others can hold me accountable by getting
me to agree to such a self-identification. Personal identity is formally
established when the two judgments coincide. This typically happens in a
court room during a trial, say, when one is made to admit to a crime. But
at a deeper level, it is related to the etymology of persona, the masks worn
in Greek drama to indicate an actor’s character. In this respect, what hap-
pens on stage is simply much more prescribed than in a trial.
viii FOREWORD

Here it is worth recalling that Plato’s main objection to drama was that
the use of masks licensed an alternative version of reality, just as some
people today object to the use of ‘avatars’ in the online world as absolving
them of moral responsibility. Locke’s orthogonal view is that the mask—
that is, the person—always needs to be constructed in situ: One doesn’t
begin by presuming a distinction between a ‘real’ and a ‘fake’ self. This
provides the key to what Locke really meant when he described the mind
as a tabula rasa (‘blank slate’). He was drawing attention to the ongoing
situated nature of the mind’s constitution, even at its most fundamental
level. In this context, his seemingly paradoxical appeal to ‘innate ideas’ is
best understood in today’s terms as simply referring to the ‘platform’ on
which many different programs might be executed.
Locke’s original audience would have been struck by the novel idea of
personhood as something that is not legally prescribed but rather is the
outcome of a struggle over attribution between an embodied individual
and a larger context of action in which the individual is embedded. Before
Locke, personhood had been seen as primarily an attribute not of physical
individuals as such, but of their role in, so to speak, society’s ‘meta-drama.’
One’s legal identity had been largely defined by membership in a collective
or corporate entity. You were a lord/peasant or citizen/priest, depending
on whether you entered by birth or by examination, respectively. (Keep in
mind that most ‘citizens’ in Locke’s day were residents of city-states, many
of whom were what we would now call ‘highly qualified immigrants.’)
Under those circumstances, it was still common in Locke’s day for the
wrong individual to be convicted for a crime simply because the evidence
pointed to someone of that person’s class as having committed the crime.
The great modern legal innovation that is the doctrine of habeas corpus
was its requirement that a specific individual is tied to a specific crime
before that individual is formally charged.
It is also worth recalling that ‘consciousness’ had been coined only a
few years prior to Locke’s discussion by the Cambridge Platonist philoso-
pher Ralph Cudworth, who defined it as the aspect of our humanity that
interfaces with God, which is experienced as a capacity to observe oneself
from the outside, an idea closely associated with ‘conscience,’ still the
French word for consciousness. Consciousness is thus the ‘internal court-
room’ in which the struggle over personal identity is conducted. The para-
digm case of this conception of consciousness was Martin Luther’s
electrifying 1521 self-presentation at the Diet of Worms. Sociologists fol-
lowing George Herbert Mead would later speak in secular terms of
 FOREWORD ix

justifying yourself in the context of seeing yourself as others see you. The
difference between Cudworth and Mead is, so to speak, a 90-degree axial
rotation of what it means to ‘stand outside’ yourself: instead of standing
above (Cudworth), you stand alongside (Mead), as befits a secular democ-
racy in which you are judged by your peers rather than by an overseeing
deity. And of course, from the cybernetic standpoint, one might think of a
pilot’s encounter with his or her airplane’s dashboard as the site of ‘con-
sciousness’ in the cyborg world.
Locke’s redefinition of personal identity had many profound implica-
tions that over the next two centuries slowly reshaped our understanding
of human psychology. Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud could turn ‘false
memory syndrome’ (what Ian Hacking provocatively calls ‘false conscious-
ness’ in Rewriting the Soul) into a topic of investigation at the end of the
nineteenth century because at that point Locke’s ‘liberal’ sense of person-
hood had been fully realized in social, economic, and legal institutions.
‘False memory syndrome’ would not matter if the memories in question
were ones that someone in the individual’s position would likely to have
had, regardless of whether the specific person on trial actually had them.
To be sure, even today, under a variety of circumstances, including legal
settings, people are allowed to justify themselves by appealing to what
other real or imagined others in their position would have or have not
done. Indeed, the great sociologist Emile Durkheim’s nephew, Marcel
Mauss, argued that the relative indifference to the truth or falsehood of
memories has been the default norm across most cultures, providing the
psychosocial basis of myth-making.
Mauss’ observation reveals the truly revolutionary import of Locke’s
proposal that one’s sense of identity is neither an inherited status nor even
a prerogative of office, but a different sort of social achievement, one
ascribed to a specific individual. The very idea of ‘cyborg persons’ revisits
this proposal with a vengeance. Psychologists today easily grant that our
sense of personal identity depends on the sort of story we are allowed to
tell about ourselves, since we cannot ever be sure that a particular memory
corresponds to something that really happened, let alone happened to us
as unique individuals. In the end, it boils down to ‘owning’ the memory.
But this Lockean insight immediately raises the question of jurisdiction of
ownership, or the ‘boundary of the self,’ in metaphysical terms. The late
Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit has done the most in recent times to
register this insight in a new key, especially in his 1984 book, Reasons and
Persons. It inspired the seminal transhumanist theorist Max More’s 1995
x FOREWORD

doctoral thesis, The Diachronic Self, which opened the door to a general-
ized sense of ‘morphological freedom’ with regard to personal identity.
Common to Locke, Parfit, and More is the intuition that consciousness
is, at least in principle, ‘substrate-neutral,’ which is to say, executable on a
variety of platforms. Thus, the same consciousness could be embodied in
multiple forms in temporal sequence, as in the reincarnation of an immor-
tal soul. But equally, there could be simultaneous multiple embodiments,
at least for a brief period—say, if one’s consciousness were downloaded
into a machine, while the biological source of that consciousness remained
intact through the translation process. Of course, the properties of the
specific substrate supporting the consciousness—the mechanical and the
organic—would be expected to bias the two versions of the same con-
sciousness differently as their respective lives proceed, resulting in differ-
ent identities over time. This point is relevant to the distinction between
virtual reality and augmented reality, which is at the core of what might
be called ‘cyborg consciousness.’ I shall return to it shortly, in the context
of Neil Harbisson, a performance artist and prominent cyborg rights activ-
ist, whom Lukaszewicz Alcaraz interviewed.
In a state of morphological freedom, personal identity turns on self-­
identification, understood as an extreme form of autopoiesis. We normally
think of self-identification as involving a relatively stable, continuously
existing physical body that is coextensive with the ‘self.’ But the Lockean
suspends this assumption. Indeed, More radicalizes a tendency implicit in
Parfit’s thought by basing self-identification simply on informational con-
tinuity, which in turn allows for, say, a resurrected dead being to resume
their former life if it agrees to identify with it. However, if the resurrected
entity somehow refuses to identify with their former life, then it becomes
a different person. More’s subsequent work for Alcor, the iconic US cry-
onics firm, suggests that he takes this argument as mainly licensing the
resumption of the same life even after the most radical biological disrup-
tion of all, death. But of course, the same argument can justify the resur-
rected entity deciding to become someone else by revaluing their past so
as to effectively ‘disown’ their old self. Moreover, such ‘disownership’
need not rely on the amnesia-like effects that characterize a ‘dissociative’
personality of the sort that concerned Janet and Freud. Rather, it could
simply involve a radical reinterpretation of one’s previous experience, oth-
erwise perfectly recalled. Indeed, a striking feature of More’s thesis is a
comprehensive critique of the philosophical sense of ‘memory’—that is, as
a relatively passive repository of ideas, images, and sensations that happen
 FOREWORD xi

to come to mind whenever we engage in conscious thought—as the psy-

chological basis for establishing personal identity.
More effectively pushed Locke’s ‘forensic’ conception of personhood
to the limit, rendering self-identification literally a matter of ‘selective
memory’ of what one wants to associate with oneself. This sounds very
Nietzschean—and it is. But it is also familiar from the earliest days of
Christian theology. Origen of Alexandria made a point of linking the
Biblical episodes of Jesus’ Transfiguration (when he first becomes aware of
his divinity) and Resurrection (when he returns in his divinity as ‘Christ’).
The hermeneutical point of this connection was to demonstrate that Jesus’
Crucifixion wasn’t some colossal human error on the part of those who
convicted and sentenced him, but an essential feature of how Jesus became
Christ. It was the ultimate ‘conversion experience,’ a physical rupture so
severe as to enable Jesus to reorganize his life, resulting in a Gestalt shift
in how Jesus subsequently went forward in the world. To be sure, there
was ‘informational continuity,’ in More’s sense, between Jesus’
Transfiguration and Resurrection. But the significance of that continuity
had been radically altered—‘transvalued,’ Nietzsche would say—by the
seriousness of the alteration made to the platform conveying it, namely the
Body of Christ.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Origen remains a controversial figure in
Christian theology. He has been understood (perhaps rightly) as suggest-
ing that Jesus simply in his human form was capable of becoming Christ,
with God doing little more than allowing it to happen, but which in turn
sets an example for all humans to follow. The main legacy of this line of
thought was the Arian heresy, a red thread that runs from Europe’s early
modern Scientific Revolution to contemporary transhumanism. It has
played out in popular culture as the story of Faust, which has been subject
to several different endings, Goethe’s classic version being among the
more hopeful. Presupposed in this entire trajectory has been the human
need for self-enhancement in order to recover the loss of divinity that
resulted from Original Sin, which following St Augustine was taken to be
a spiritual defect that is genetically transmitted across all human genera-
tions, starting with the fallen Adam and Eve. The late US historian David
Noble took the measure of this development in a book shrewdly entitled
The Religion of Technology, the scope of which extended from the mechan-
ical and disciplinary regimes of medieval monasticism to the pharmaceuti-
cal promises of today’s genomic medicine. An intuitive interpretation of
Noble’s thesis which transcends that sacred/secular divide is that, no
xii FOREWORD

matter how healthy and successful we may appear, we see ourselves as

‘always already’ disabled. It is this self-understanding of humanity that
makes the cyborg an attractive figure.
Neil Harbisson is a pivotal figure in this context. He was born unable
to distinguish colors and became a cyborg once an antenna was surgically
implanted in his skull to enable him to translate light into sound. He
nowadays earns a living by performing a distinctive form of music that
reflects his acquired synesthetic capacity. It would be fair to describe
Harbisson’s access to reality as both virtual and augmented. It is ‘virtual’
in the sense that the antenna allows him to distinguish colors that others
would normally do with their eyes. But Harbisson’s access is also ‘aug-
mented’ in the sense that he is now able to distinguish ‘more colors,’ so to
speak, which has fed into his musical compositions, generating new visual
and auditory experiences for his audiences. Thus, Harbisson’s antenna
straddles between simulating a lost sense to restore its natural function
and extending his sensory capacities into realms of experience not nor-
mally had by others. Moreover, it would be difficult to separate the thera-
peutic and enhancement functions of the antenna unless he was legally
forbidden from producing music—that is, prevented from converting the
virtual into the augmented, and thereby deprived of both his self-­
expression and a unique livelihood. This point confirms Harbisson’s genu-
ine cyborg status.
The duality of the virtual and the augmented in Harbisson’s cyborg
existence epitomizes a schism that has always existed in the histories of
both biology and technology. A convenient way to characterize the transi-
tion from Aristotle to Darwin in the history of biology, which of course
did not happen straightforwardly, is in terms of a shift from thinking about
organisms as purpose-made to thinking about them as works in progress.
In the Aristotelian world-view, one observes how organisms normally
function, which in turn sets the normative standard by which organisms
are judged. This also suited a specific—not necessarily correct but none-
theless very influential—Christian understanding of divine creation in
which God designed each type of creature with its own function as part of
maintaining some common world order. Linnaeus’ coinage of Homo
Sapiens in the mid-eighteenth century still reflected this sensibility. On this
view, a cyborg is understood purely in therapeutic terms. Thus Harbisson’s
antenna is regarded as remedying a disability, with the music he produces
seen as ‘unnatural,’ or perhaps even not really music.
 FOREWORD xiii

Those familiar with natural law theory will recognize this attitude as
influencing judgments in such other ‘artificial’ interventions in the life
process as contraception, abortion, stem cell research, and euthanasia. In
contrast, Darwin effectively treated organisms as raw material with which
nature experiments (or ‘selects’) through a process of elimination (aka
death). Nothing is ever truly complete or adequate from the standpoint of
nature. Rather, the adaptiveness of organisms is always being tested under
new conditions. Although Darwin knew no more about genetics than
Aristotle, his world-view better suited biology’s ‘Newtonian’ moment,
which came when the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel proposed that
organisms were composed of combinable factors, which suggested a more
experimental, even lottery-like view of how biological inheritance relates
to survival.
To see the connection between biology and technology, consider the
role of ‘mutation’ in this lottery-like conception of life. Once life is under-
stood as occasionally throwing up highly improbable organic forms, there
is a question as to whether they die, adapt, or set a new standard to which
others then either adapt or else die. In 1940 geneticist Richard Goldschmidt
coined the term ‘hopeful monster’ to characterize a mutation that man-
ages to ‘set a new standard’ by occupying an ecological niche previously
inhabited by another species and refashioning it for the purposes of itself
and its future generations. The organism’s distinctive ‘mutant’ features,
which at first put it at a disadvantage turn out to be its long-term strength,
given the vicissitudes of natural selection. To be sure, Goldschmidt’s work
has been largely marginalized by modern evolutionary biology, yet it has
provided inspiration for thinkers ranging from Karl Popper to Donna
Haraway.
However, a problem with Goldschmidt’s reception, especially after
Hiroshima, was that the very idea of mutation—now understood as the
product of nuclear radiation—was subject to a protracted political debate.
Science fiction movies of the period routinely dramatized the stakes. On
the one hand, US Cold War strategist Herman Kahn (Stanley Kubrick’s
model for Dr. Strangelove) claimed optimistically that the range of muta-
tions of Homo Sapiens capable of surviving a nuclear war might finally
serve to eliminate various persistent forms of social discrimination. On the
other hand, most evolutionary biologists cautioned against any easy cele-
bration of mutation, with some following US ecologist-activist Barry
Commoner in calling for a ban on nuclear weapons altogether. We live
with a more subdued version of this debate today, as Kahn and Commoner
xiv FOREWORD

anticipated the terms of reference in today’s the trans/posthuman

debate—at least in terms of their respective attitudes toward risky innova-
tions: Kahn the more ‘proactionary’ (i.e. transhumanist) and Commoner
the more ‘precautionary’ (i.e. posthumanist). Arguably, the nuclear
‘doomsday’ scenario that originally concerned Kahn and Commoner, and
dominated the international relations imaginary from the late 1940s to
the late 1980s, marked the first time that the potential for universal cybor-
ganization was countenanced—albeit as the radiation fallout of a nuclear
confrontation.
Recall that until the mid-nineteenth century, ‘innovation’ was normally
taken to mean ‘monstrosity’ in the pejorative sense of, say, Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. It was only once industrial innovations started to boost the
Europeanized world to unprecedented levels of productivity and wealth
that the relevant value reversal took place. Indeed, what Marx and
Schumpeter called the ‘creative destruction’ of markets was no longer an
unwelcomed disturbance to traditional ways of life. On the contrary, it
became the driving force of the capitalist economy. Characteristic of these
now positively valued ‘innovations’ was their novel combination and
repurposing of already existing technologies. For example, Henry Ford
managed to replace the horse as the primary form of personal transport in
the early twentieth century by attaching a gasoline engine to a four-­
wheeled bicycle. The legacy of that profound shift in the physical constitu-
tion of the vehicle has been our increased reliance on petroleum, our
increased carbon emissions, and our increased segregation from the envi-
ronment. For better or worse, Ford perhaps did the most to show in con-
crete terms how humans might acquire an independence and mastery of
nature. Such an achievement certainly qualifies as a ‘Faustian Bargain.’
We might think of the combinatorial mentality of Ford—and indeed
that of his first employer Thomas Edison—as akin to Mendel’s original
pea experiments, which involved presuming that an organism’s traits are
the outcome of a trial and error process, the underlying algorithms set the
research agenda of the science we call ‘genetics.’ The word ‘bricoleur’ is
not out of place in this context: Indeed, in a famous 1977 Nature article,
‘Evolution and Tinkering,’ the great French molecular biologist François
Jacob himself adapted the term from the anthropologist Claude Lévi-­
Strauss to describe the workings of natural selection. Thus, it is not unrea-
sonable to regard the cyborg as literally a ‘hopeful monster’ in both the
biological and technological senses: It is a mutation and an innovation.
The best way to think about the implications of this point is through a
 FOREWORD xv

question that is familiar from Lukaszewicz Alcaraz’s home discipline of

aesthetics: Does form follow function, or function follow form? We can think
of the history of Western art as the movement from presuming the former
to the latter answer—from ‘classical’ to ‘modern,’ as exemplified by
Aristotle’s Poetics and Lessing’s Laokoön, respectively. In this respect, the
cyborg epitomizes the modern attitude—very self-consciously, in the case
of Neil Harbisson.
The classical approach to art assumes that one grasps the purpose of
something in nature and the point of art is to reproduce the original, per-
haps with improvements but within the design of the original. On this
view, art is not in the business of converting the natural into the ‘unnatu-
ral.’ Indeed, artifice is generally regarded as something best left hidden
(e.g. not seeing a painting’s brushstrokes, an actor’s makeup), lest it be
regarded as ‘monstrous.’ For the classicist, ‘mastering’ an art amounts to
exploiting a medium—but only within its ‘natural’ expressive limits.
Unsurprisingly, classicists regard aesthetic perception as a refined sense of
pleasure, a domestication of natural sensory experience. The preoccupa-
tion with ‘taste’ in the eighteenth-century writings of Shaftesbury and
Hume was probably classicism’s last and most sophisticated stand—at least
until its recent revival by evolutionary psychology. (But that is a story for
another day.) In any case, that was the attitude interrogated by Lessing,
who concluded that it was silly to think that some media are inherently
better suited than others for expressing certain themes. For him, the point
of art is to realize potentially any theme in the medium’s terms, with the
extent of the artist’s actual achievement resting on the outcome of that
struggle.
Modernists following Lessing increasingly demonized the ‘classical’
attitude as ‘representationalism’ for failing to take advantage of a medi-
um’s full expressive capacity, which in the hands of a genuinely ‘creative’
and ‘original’ artist could result in works that prompt experiences that
would never happen naturally. Such experiences may be described as
‘counter-intuitive,’ ‘shocking,’ or even ‘sublime.’ (Think Picasso, Joyce,
Schoenberg.) If the artist is trying to reproduce anything, it is the sense of
awe associated with one’s experience of God. This was the context in
which the artist as ‘genius’ came to the fore in early nineteenth-century
Romanticism. Put crudely, when function started to follow form in art,
artists became more concerned with how their works looked to them (as
proxies for their audiences) than how the works looked in relation to their
putative objects. Thus, the viewer as a potential creator of the artwork
xvi FOREWORD

became constitutive of the work’s interpretation and value. This shift in

perspective gave unprecedented scope for ‘critics’ who grant the prima
facie validity of the artist’s chosen theme and medium, while possibly con-
cluding that the work fails ‘on its own terms.’ No reference to ‘nature’ is
needed to reach either a positive or a negative critical verdict on the art-
work. On the contrary, artists are judged by the power of their artifice—
that is, whether they exploited their chosen medium to maximum effect.
From this standpoint, Harbisson is the ultimate modernist artist, the
full-bodied exemplification of Locke’s forensic conception of the self. His
cyborg existence is literally a collaborative project, the platform for which
happens to be biological. The nature of the struggle for ‘cyborg rights’
that he has spearheaded with Moon Ribas is itself a work in progress. If
cyborgs come to be legally entitled to rights, will they be as disabled or
enhanced humans? Of course, cyborgs might also achieve rights as a dis-
tinct class of non-human entities, which would be very much in a ‘posthu-
manist’ spirit. But that then invites the prospect of ‘fully abled’ humans
voluntarily migrating to cyborg status. After all, if someone admires the art
that Harbisson has achieved with his antenna, why shouldn’t others try to
emulate it, perhaps by disabling/enhancing other parts of their bodies in
the name of ‘new media’? Under such fluid ontological conditions, will
the cyborg be a ‘strong attractor’ that sets a trend for others to follow, or
will it be seen as the ‘enemy within’ that needs be persecuted and avoided?
This question poses a much more realistic challenge to humanity’s future
normative order than the simplistic ‘them vs. us’ currently portrayed in
dystopic fantasies of superintelligent artificial intelligences. In the end, we
should take the idea of ‘cyborg persons’ seriously because ‘we’ are becom-
ing ‘them.’

Department of SociologySteve Fuller

University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
 Acknowledgments

This book is the product of a four-year research on posthumanism and

technological enhancement of human bodies, in which I offer consider-
ations on how to approach the new world and new persons emerging from
the process of natural-cultural evolution, intentionally guided, but not
univocally subordinated to agents in societies/communities. On my way I
met many amazing and inspiring persons, without whom this book would
not be as it is, and on whom I would like to shed some light, because
although I am an agent responsible for the book you have in hand, there
are many people and circumstances that formed the final effect.
The whole journey started in Oslo, where during a seminar on posthu-
manism I noticed important issues to be addressed in reference to the idea
of posthuman, that is the one-sided notion of ‘human,’ the Cartesian one.
Starting from that moment I followed my scientific appetite, and as a
Fellow of the Kosciuszko Foundation I conducted research in 2016 at
Temple University in Philadelphia, working closely with the wonderful
philosopher Joseph Margolis, who became also a dearest friend. Discussions
on the post-Darwinian approach to evolution helped me to construe
understanding of the place of cyborg persons in the course of evolution.
During my research stay I also had a great opportunity to interview Neil
Harbisson and Moon Ribas, the first cyborg persons in the world, cyborg
activists, and artists, and Eduardo Kac, an artist using bio-engineering in
the creative process and who has the first reported RFID implant inserted
under the skin. These meetings gave me specific empirical content to my
theoretical considerations, and I decided to add full transcriptions of the
interviews at the end of this book.

xvii
xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My research in posthumanism in the United States took me also to The

New York Posthuman Research Group, conducted by Francesca Ferrando
at New York University. There, during one of summits, I had one of the
first chances to share my ideas on cyborg persons emerging in the evolu-
tionary continuum from human persons, and I clarified distinctions
between post and transhumanism. In addition to Francesca Ferrando, also
one of the members of the organizing committee of the international con-
ference ‘Beyond Humanism,’ I have been happy to meet on my way other
persons involved in this same endeavor, such as Stefan Lorenz Sorgner,
Jaime Del Val, and Jan Stasienko. In one of the conferences I met Steven
Fuller, who has shown me the legal implications and context of my con-
siderations and has painted a vision for the future of the republic of trans-
humanity (using his own words). There is also an important person in
Poland to whom I owe depth and seriousness of my approach to the tech-
nological world, and this is my friend Michal Ostrowicki, alias Sidey Myoo,
philosopher of technology, aesthetician, metaphysician of the electronic
world, and manager of Academica Electronica in Second Life.
Of course, apart from the strictly scientific direction, the research would
not have progressed without all the support from the Faculty of Painting
and New Media at Academy of Art in Szczecin, and from my family: my
grandmother Charlotte, who has instilled in me passion for knowledge;
my mother Ewa, who has always motivated me on the way; and my sons
Szczepan and Antonio, who inspire me for future. I also wish to thank the
language corrector: Elizabeth Gagnon, who helped me to polish my
English and to clarify expressions of my ideas, due to her understanding of
my thought and our steady professional relationship.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
1.1 Comments on Methodological Approach  4
Bibliography  7

2 Evolutionary Continuity between Human Person and

Cyborg Person  9
2.1 Change in Human Condition. Who is Human? Who is
Posthuman? Who is Cyborg?  9
2.2 Joseph Margolis’ Redefinition of the Human Self or Person 19
2.3 Evolutionary Transformation from the Human Self to the
Cyborg Self 22
Bibliography 26

3 Semiotic Approach to Person and Cyborg Person 29

3.1 Person within General Theory of Signs: Charles Sanders Peirce  29
3.2 Person in Cultural Realism: Joseph Margolis 34
3.3 Formal Approach to Person in Law 37
3.4 Embodiment Matters 39
Bibliography 45

4 Person in a Social and Technological World 49

4.1 Personal Identity: David Hume and Joseph Margolis 49
4.2 Person in Technical World: Slavoj Žižek and Rob Cover 53

xix
Another random document with
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around like a butterfly this minute, most likely,” and the young man
smiled rather bitterly.
He had come from the city to make sure a girl was not in trouble, but
the thought of her enjoying herself made him uneasy.
From the village to the “Bend” was, as he had remarked, quite a
distance. In spite of brisk walking it was nearly dark before his
destination was reached.
“That must be the place,” he thought, quickening his steps as the
white buildings of the Whittaker farm loomed up in the dusk.
“What in the world shall I do, now I’m here?” he asked himself, as he
paused in front of the house. “If she’d only come out and take back
her words it would be all right. But goodness! she’s an awful spunky
little thing when she’s once under way, and it was pretty tough for
her. It’s mighty certain it’s not in her line, but I needn’t have been
quite so hard with her. Hang it all! what am I going to do now? What
in the Dickens made me come, anyway? Only because I’m such a
fool I couldn’t keep myself away.”
He stood leaning against a tree near one of the windows. The
summer air was very still. Only occasionally the birds stirred in their
nests above his head and murmured sleepily. Once some restless
animal pounded the floor of the barn.
Suddenly a low strain of music startled him. Did it come from one of
the open windows? Timidly soft it sounded, as though fearing to let
itself be heard—weird and sad.
The man out among the shadows trembled. “Can that be she? Has
she given in?”
The music grew more abandoned. In its sorrow it seemed to have
forgotten its timidity. The long notes sobbed and moaned, now and
then dying into quieter, more entreating tones. In their tears they
paused and prayed.
The listener was a musician, and the melody reached the depths of
his soul. Facing the window, he called in a broken voice, “Gertrude.”
The music instantly ceased. A glad cry rang out, “Herman! my
Herman!”
In a second, the man had vaulted the low sill of the parlor window.
He hurriedly glanced around the room. No musical instrument could
be seen, but a trembling form was steadying itself against the
casing.
“Gertie, poor little Gertie!”
A faint voice answered, “Is it true? Can it be you? O Herman!”
Again the music rang out. Triumphant peals this time, strain after
strain of tumultuous joy, clearer and clearer, stronger and stronger,
until the notes could hardly hold their fulness.
In the parlor Gertrude and Herman stood gazing into each other’s
startled eyes.
The wild, rapturous song paused; then breaking out in steadier
notes, even and rich, it gradually mellowed and hushed until it died
away in a whispered breath.
“It ended like a prayer of thanksgiving,” said he.
Gertrude caught her breath. “Hush!” She buried her face in her
hands, whispering, “It was. I see it all now. It must have been little
Chee,—there is no one else.” Lifting her head, she added, with a
strange, new light in her eyes, “Oh, Herman, she was thanking God
for answering her prayer. I believe it.” And then, half choked with
feeling, she told what she knew of her little Indian cousin.
 CHAPTER IX.
COUSIN GERTRUDE stole up-stairs. Chee had heard good-byes a
few moments before, and was hoping, yet fearing, she might find
her.
The child sat by the window removing her stockings. Daddy Joe’s
fiddle lay on the bed.
“Birdie, how could you? Oh, how could you?”
“I don’t know,” answered Chee, in an excited voice. “I tried not to
play out loud, but I got feeling sorrier and sorrier, and wishing He
would only let me help. And I forgot to play still, and then I heard a
man’s voice, and heard you answer, and I knew everything was all
right, and I was so happy I just snatched up Daddy’s fiddle and
played out my glad. I didn’t care who heard, for a minute; and, oh,
Cousin Gertrude, I felt it—I felt it.”
“Felt what, Childie?”
“Why, the music—way down in my heart, and all over me, just like I
did at the concert. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s something, and
I’ve tried to feel it for such a long time. And now I have, and it makes
me so happy—so happy, you can’t know. It just makes me glad all
through, and I feel like crying, too.”
“I am as happy as you, my own little Bird.”
Chee’s arms were around Gertrude’s neck, as she asked, “He did
hear, didn’t He?”
“Yes, my comfort, He did hear,” answered Gertrude, tears again in
her voice, “but you helped Him.”
“I helped Him?” echoed Chee, shaking her head almost sadly. “No, I
wanted to so much, but He didn’t need me.”
After a little, Gertrude said, “Listen, while I tell you how you helped—
you’ll see He did need you, after all.
“I love the violin, too—not as you do. I wanted to play because
people expected I would. I felt too proud to say that, after years of
study, I could never be a great player, and so I kept on working with
one teacher after another. Finally, Mr. Farrar, that is my Herman, told
me I had better not spend all my time and money for that any longer.
He said I had come to a place where I could never go much beyond,
and that I wanted to play more from pride than from love—just
because my parents had decided, when I was but a child, that music
was my first gift. I had found true what he said, but it made me angry
that he should dare to tell me. I said some words back. He retorted.
We’re both sorry now, but I was so vexed then, I said I would never
touch the violin again. My temper offended him, his also rose, and he
said he would not speak to me until I took back my words.
“It was the day I had set to come here. He was just going to the
woods for his vacation, but he felt so sad he could not go, and went
back home instead. Then one night he had a horrible dream that
troubled him, so he came to see if I was really safe and well. He
says that, down in his heart, he was hoping I was ready to take back
my words.
“While he was wishing so much I would come to him—he was out
under the trees, you know—he heard music. He thought for a
moment I was playing, and when he reached me and found out I
wasn’t—well, we were both so glad to be together again we forgot
which one was to blame. It seemed very silly to have quarrelled at all
when we understood and loved each other so. Anyway, now we are
only glad to be together again and forget everything. Can’t you see
how it might never have come right if you had not played when you
did?”
Chee made no answer, her heart was full.
“Of course,” she continued, “if he had stopped to think he would
have known it never could have been my playing,—he knows me so
well,—but he was anxious and didn’t realize. It seemed to him, he
said, the music must be mine, he wanted so much I should take back
my words.
“You did help, my Birdie, but you sha’n’t be left to sing alone any
longer. Oh!” a new light dawning, “now I know why you love to think
Opechee means a song-bird,” and she kissed the silent child with
new fondness.
“We are going to ride in the morning, my Herman and I, and when
we return perhaps we will have something to tell you. But oh, my
precious cousin, you can never, never know all you have done for
us.”
Chee only answered with a grave little shake of her head, “It wasn’t
me, ’twas only Our Father, and”—she added tenderly—“Daddy Joe’s
fiddle.”
 CHAPTER X.
IN the morning, as he had promised, Mr. Farrar came to take Cousin
Gertrude to drive.
“Chee! Chee! Nut-Brown Maiden, where are you?” Stepping to the
stairway, Gertrude called, more earnestly, “Birdie, I want you.”
A shy little face peered over the railing, “Please, Cousin Gertrude,
have I got to come down?”
“Why, Chee, wouldn’t you like to? There is some one here I want you
to see.”
“Yes, I know, but I’d rather look at him through the parlor blinds.”
Gertrude showed her disappointment. Chee watched her and
yielded, exclaiming, “Well, you must be awful proud of him to feel so
bad. I suppose I’d ought to come.”
Cousin Gertrude’s cheeks grew pinker, but she did not look
displeased; she only held out her hand to Chee. Wondering what
she might say to put the little girl more at ease, she led her to the
veranda.
A gentleman was standing by the carriage block, stroking the mane
of a horse. At sight of Chee he quickly removed his hat, as though to
some fine lady. “So this is little Chee,” said he, “our sweet singer,
only she doesn’t really sing, she plays. Good morning, my dear.”
“Good morning. I don’t know just what to call you yet. It doesn’t seem
quite kind to say ‘Mr. Farrar,’ when you are Cousin Gertrude’s best
friend, does it? She calls you ‘my Herman,’ but I’m afraid she’d
rather I wouldn’t say that, too.”
Mr. Farrar was pleased with this artlessness, characteristic of Chee,
so unlike any boldness, so like open confidence in one she
instinctively recognized to be worthy. Her voice at such times
seemed to say, “I’ll trust you, you may trust me.”
His eyes twinkled, but he said gravely, seeming not to notice
Gertrude, “Suppose you compromise, and say ‘our Herman.’”
Chee gave a perplexed glance toward Gertrude. Suddenly a smile
brightened her face, as she exclaimed, “Oh, I’ve got it. Why didn’t we
think before? S’pose I call you ‘Cousin Herman.’” She gave no
opportunity for dissent before adding, “It’s so much more
comfortable, now I know who you are.”
Cousin Gertrude appeared somewhat confused, but her friend patted
the little girl’s head approvingly, saying, “Quite right, little Chee, the
very thing, indeed—”
“But Birdie,” hastily interrupted Gertrude, “we haven’t thanked you
yet.” The child cast furtive glances toward the house. Her
companions changed the conversation. Their eyes, following hers,
had seen others, steel blue, peering through a lace curtain.
“Is Aunt Mean busy?” asked Gertrude.
After a discreet silence Aunt Mean appeared in the front doorway. A
brief introduction had scarcely passed before she said, aside to
Gertrude, in low but decidedly distinct tones, “A very likely young
man, my dear, very likely. You showed good taste. I persume there
ain’t a better looking in our neighborhood,” adding, reflectively, “It’s a
mighty serious business, this gittin’ a man.”
Chee wondered if Aunt Mean spoke from experience, and if it
wouldn’t have been a very serious matter indeed if Aunt Mean had
ever attempted to “git” any man other than her brother. During the
embarrassment that followed, Mr. Farrar found occasion to remark
that it was getting late, and Cousin Gertrude felt obliged to go for her
hat. But before entering the carriage she managed to whisper to
Chee, “Don’t undress when you go up-stairs to-night—we shall be
home early.”
What a long day it seemed to Chee! How anxiously she listened for
the sound of wheels on the driveway!
After all she watched in vain, for they had left the carriage before the
Bend was reached. The first she knew of their coming was a step on
the stairway—very soft, like stocking feet. She opened the door a
little. “Take off your shoes please, Chee, and come down into the
parlor awhile.”
It was fortunate that the bedrooms occupied by Miss Almeana and
her brother were at the extreme end of the house. Furthermore, both
were slightly deaf and extraordinarily sound sleepers.
In the parlor the cousins and Mr. Farrar gathered around Chee’s tin
lamp. “And so you have had no instructor but that minister,” he
began. “We saw him to-day, and, as he himself says, he doesn’t
know much about music. You can read notes, he tells me.”
“Easy music,” answered Chee, bashfully. The dreaded ordeal had
come—her secret was out.
“Well, that’s good, but how in the world did you learn to manage the
instrument? Who taught you to hold it, child?”
“I don’t know, Cousin Herman, I think perhaps I hold it just as Daddy
did, maybe I don’t, though. It’s so long since I’ve seen him I can’t be
sure.” This last was added a little wearily. “What has the way I hold
Daddy’s fiddle to do with Cousin Herman?” she wondered.
“It’s just as I say,” exclaimed Mr. Farrar, turning to Gertrude,
—“inherited talent. Probably the father was only a fair player, but
unless I’m stepping down a peg, the child’s a genius.” Chee
wondered if a genius was something nice, but, because she disliked
to show her ignorance, refrained from asking.
“Of course the child has run to weeds—it couldn’t be otherwise. I
must hear her play again, but at all odds she is a musician.” Then
turning suddenly to Chee, he asked, “Where is your violin, my dear?
You must play your best for me, then Gertrude shall tell you our
plan.”
Chee looked frightened, “Why, Cousin Herman, I couldn’t, she’d hear
me—I couldn’t for anything.”
“Who? Oh, I forgot. Well, we’ll have to fix it somehow. Where have
you been playing all this while? Up attic? What’s the harm now,
then?” So saying, Mr. Farrar proceeded to unlace his shoes.
Chee was a little tremulous over the undertaking, but Cousin
Herman was firm; so carrying her small lamp she led the way up the
front stairs, shielding the flickering flame with her hand. The light fell
full upon her excited face. Now and then she paused in the slow,
careful ascent to give whispered warning where a stair-riser might
creak—all so familiar to her. Mr. Farrar easily stepped over these
places, as did Chee, but, lest there should be any slight noise and
their stealthy journey to the attic be disclosed, he assisted Gertrude
over the treacherous places as indicated by their little Indian guide.
When the garret was reached, Gertrude seated herself on a trunk.
Mr. Farrar leaned against the chimney. Chee lingered at the railing,
anxiously listening.
 “SHE STOOD A MOMENT IN MEDITATION, THE VIOLIN
ALREADY UNDER HER CHIN”
“Chee!” they both impatiently called, at the same time glancing
curiously around.
She approached the familiar hiding-place, and very slowly drew out
the old violin box. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips met in a
straight line. A brave determination burned in her eyes. She realized
in a vague way that much depended upon this effort, but with a
pleased, expectant look she deftly attuned the strings of her
instrument.
When this was done, she stood a moment in meditation, the violin
already under her chin, lightly tapping one foot with the bow.
It was a queer place in which to make one’s début,—that dusty
corner of the old loft. The tin lamp on a box lighted up the beams
hung with long drooping garlands of cobwebs. Not within reach of
the lamplight, or the pale moonshine coming through the curtainless
windows, huge black shadows gathered around. But the weirdness
of the aspect did not impress Chee; for her a more familiar spot
could not have been chosen. Oh, how many happy hours she had
spent in that dim little corner!
Soon her meditative position changed, she had come to a decision,
and began to play.
At first, embarrassment hindered her, but before many notes
trembled out on the stillness, she had forgotten everything except
her song.
It was only the old-fashioned air, “Annie Laurie.” The child must have
known the words, for her music told, even plainer than any words
could tell, the sentiment of the old-time refrain. Perhaps she had
guessed more of her listeners’ state of mind than they knew.
However this may have been, she had chosen well; while the song
lasted, her listeners forgot to be critics—they were only lovers.
The last strains had scarcely died away, when, close upon them,
followed the opening notes of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” If the first
piece had been selected for her audience, this was for herself.
It was her favorite, the one she most often played. No
embarrassment now—with a far-away expression in her eyes, she
gave variation after variation of the familiar hymn. Suddenly the bow
paused—the note just begun was never finished. A slight noise came
from the stairway. After a moment of listening, Mr. Farrar crept to the
railing and looked down. Everything was still.
“It must have been only mice,” he said, but Chee was thoroughly
frightened. Nothing could induce her to continue. At the first sign of
alarm Daddy Joe’s fiddle had disappeared.
 CHAPTER XI.
AFTER Mr. Farrar had bade them good night and stolen out the front
doorway, Gertrude revealed to Chee their plan.
“We are going to have a concert,” she announced. “Mr. Green says
you haven’t had one here in town since last Christmas—and we’re
going to get people so interested the whole place will turn out.
Herman knows how, for he has gotten up several in the city.”
“Get up a concert, why, how can he?” asked Chee, incredulously.
“He will have a chorus. Every child in the village must be in that. And
he is going to send for some of his friends,—a man to play the harp,
and a lady to sing, and some others. And Herman, you know, plays
on the piano,—that’s his profession.”
“Oh!” said Chee, in a tone of new understanding.
“But wait, dear, the best part is coming. You are the best part of all.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Birdie, you. That’s what the whole thing is for. It’s Mr. Green’s
idea as much as Herman’s. It’s to be kept a surprise—I mean you
are—your name won’t appear on the programme at all.”
“My name on the programme! Cousin Gertrude, what do you mean?”
Poor Chee was thoroughly alarmed now.
“Mean? You dear little monkey, you. Why nothing at all but that you
and your violin are going to bring down the house.”
“Do you mean my secret has got to come out?”
“Of course. Isn’t it already out? More’s the pity it has been kept so
long.”
“But Aunt Mean! Why, Cousin Gertrude, what are you thinking of?
You know how she hates it, and calls it wicked.” Chee was almost in
tears.
“Dear Birdie, can’t you see that’s what the whole thing is for—to cure
Aunt Mean of her nonsense? You know how proud she is—we think
if we can only get her to the hall, that, after she has heard how
beautifully you play and how fine people think it is, she will give right
in.”
“I’m ’fraid she mightn’t—’sides, Cousin Gertrude, how could I ever
play at the hall? I never, never could do that.”
“Chee,” Gertrude’s face was earnest with pleading, “you love your
little violin, don’t you?”
“You know I love Daddy Joe’s fiddle best of everything in this world.”
“Well, if you knew that all you ever might learn about it depended
upon whether you played at the hall or not, couldn’t you do it?”
“Do you mean I could learn to make music like the man at the
concert long ago?” Chee spoke tremulously, and tears filled her eyes
as they looked up, so full of yearning entreaty.
“Yes, I think you could. If our concert was a success, so Aunt Mean
would let you go, we would take you to the city with us, where you
could study music to your heart’s content.”
“Go to the city and learn how to play all I want to!” Chee echoed.
“Can’t you get courage to play at the concert, now?” The child’s lips
compressed for a moment, then she answered in a whisper, “I don’t
believe she’d ever let me go, but I’ll try.”
“That’s a dear. Don’t you worry about Aunt Mean. Just wait until my
Nut-Brown Maiden thrills the house.”
Chee shook her head dubiously. “Aunt Mean never lets anything
make her feel as though she must fly straight to heaven. She can’t,”
said the little girl, translating Gertrude’s words into a language of her
own.
 CHAPTER XII.
BUSY weeks followed. Mr. Farrar frequently came and went—of
course to see Gertrude, but often their afternoon drive together was
only to and from the parsonage gate.
Finally the day for the concert was set. Artists from a distance were
engaged, and the children’s rehearsal commenced. Chesterfield life
had begun to lag. For the farmers it was less dull than for the
townsfolk, on account of the haying. But gossip was scarce, and the
news of a concert ahead was a genuine treat.
“Now I wouldn’t snap my fingers to hear the school youngsters holler,
but regular music fellers from the city—that’s something we don’t get
a chance at every day.”
The choir-leader made this remark with his usual nasal drawl. The
big bulletin of the coming event was being fastened against the wall
of the post-office. A little knot of men and boys had gathered around.
“Well, I don’t know as I could ’zactly afford to pay for city finery, but
as Sadie and Bill are both a-going to sing, mother ’n’ me cal’ated as
how we’d have to see they did right proper,” replied wee Sadie’s
grandpa.
“Stuff and nonsense,” growled the doctor, as he peered impatiently
at the postmistress, as though that meek little person was to blame
for the tardiness of a letter, “waste of time and money.” But the
doctor was a bachelor, and “took in the shows,” so the people said,
during his city trips. He was a gruff man, and though they had often
proved his kind-heartedness in a case of measles, or scarlet fever,
small urchins stepped aside with alacrity as he passed.
“Some on you is wrong, and some on you is maybe right,” said Bill
Saulswick, the village wag and philosopher, “but I know good tunes
when I hears ’um; just gimme the sort, be it fiddlin’, or singin’, or
drummin’,—that tells me why I’m who, and which I’m what, and when
I’m where, and I’ll sit there till the lights go out.”
While the villagers enjoyed the gossip, poor little Chee was in a whirl
of excitement. Her days seemed a series of ups and downs. At times
she could hardly wait for the great day to arrive, then in a moment
her heart would sink with terror, and she would hide herself for hours
until she had conquered the temptation to tell Cousin Gertrude she
must break her promise. But she came of a sturdy, resolute race,—to
falter would be worse than to fail, so she struggled with herself,
Gertrude claiming more and more of her time as the eventful day
drew nearer.
“It do beat all,” Aunt Mean would exclaim, as from the pantry window
she watched the girls go through the meadow lot, “what Gertrude
finds so entertainin’ about that child. She hasn’t eyes for nobody but
her, gaddin’ off every day, or ridin’ to town. I should most expect her
beau would make some kind of a row over it.”
For they did “gad off” every pleasant day, sometimes to the grove to
plan, but more often to the minister’s. There Chee would practise on
Mr. Green’s violin, while Gertrude read or talked with Mrs. Green.
A few days before the concert, Mr. Farrar met them that he might
hear, for the last time, Chee’s piece.
“Cousin Herman, if I play very well indeed, will you please say ‘yes’
to something?”
“That’s rather broad,” replied the gentleman; “suppose I can’t say
‘yes.’”
“Oh, but I know you can, just as well as not.”
“What is it about?”
Chee flushed a little, but answered, smilingly, “Clothes.”
“Ho, ho, that’s it! Well, I guess I can go it.”
Mr. Farrar considered himself an apt student of human nature. “It’s
only natural the child should have a little pride. It’s a good thing
Gertrude intends to see to a gown for her.” So said the young man to
himself, little doubting the exact nature of Chee’s request.
Satisfied with his promise to say “yes,” the little girl began to play her
chosen piece.
It had taken so long to make a selection from her old pieces, Cousin
Herman had bought several new ones—marvels of creation they
were to Chee. “Fixed up with the baby songs all in,” as she styled the
turns and trills. She had tried to play true to the notes, but it was a
hard task. To-day as she was conscientiously measuring them out,
he left the room a moment to speak with the minister. Returning, he
was surprised at the progress she had made in his absence.
Thinking his presence had hindered her, he stole softly to the door.
With a listening expression on her face, Chee was slowly pacing the
floor. The sheet of music lay on the table, face down. Undoubtedly,
as Mr. Farrar recalled the selection, it was the one she was playing—
but how changed! It seemed to have been but the framework for the
little artist to build upon.
She finished, and brushing the damp hair from her warm forehead,
looked up. Cousin Herman stood in the doorway. Chee glanced at
the neglected sheet of music with a guilty look. “I forgot, Cousin
Herman, I really did,” she explained, hurriedly.
“I guess you needn’t bother with the notes. I see you have the
melody in your head.” He tried to speak unconcernedly.
Chee was relieved. “I’m ever so glad. You don’t know how much
easier it will be.”
“After you have a teacher I suppose it will be necessary to tie you
down to accurate reading, but until then we won’t spoil your own
way.”
The minister came in just then, followed by his wife and Gertrude. “Is
the lesson over?” he asked.
“Cousin Herman has got to say ‘yes’ now.”
“Say ‘yes?’ What to?”
“That’s just what he hasn’t been told,” replied Mr. Farrar.
Going to him, Chee drew down his head, that she might whisper in
his ear. He looked perplexed. A private consultation followed, much
to the amusement of the others in the room.
At first he seemed hard to persuade, but finally yielded, and Chee
left him with a satisfied, “That’s a good Cousin Herman.”
“Gertrude,” he said at parting, “you needn’t order Chee’s dress; that
matter has already been attended to.”
Gertrude was not only astonished, she was disappointed, and
started to speak, then checked herself.
“After all, Herman must know what he is about. I’ll leave it to him.”
Gertrude had learned one lesson; it could not be forgotten soon.
 CHAPTER XIII.
THE day of the concert smilingly dawned.
At breakfast, Uncle Reuben surprised them by saying, “I’m going
over the river to-day, Mean. Don’t you want to go ’long, and stop to
George’s?”
Aunt Mean hesitated.
“You kin wear your best bunnet, so’s to stop to the concert on the
way back.”
“Reuben Whittaker! you’re not going to blow in a single cent on any
concert, and you know it. If Gertrude is foolish ’nough to go and take
Chee, that ain’t none of my business.” Aunt Mean looked toward her
nieces as she spoke, but the cousins’ eyes were fixed upon their
plates.
“Why, Mean,” said Uncle Reuben, mildly, “the minister says the hull
town is going to turn out. Even—”
“When did you see the minister?” interrupted his sister.
“Even Miss Flanigin sent for her sister to take keer of the young’ns,”
continued Uncle Reuben, without notice of any question. “I never
reckoned on our being behind the Flanigins.”
“Humph! those Flanigins,” was Aunt Mean’s only comment. But
Gertrude noticed, as they drove away, a bonnet with a purple poppy
had won the day.
“What could have possessed Uncle Reuben to take her off to-day, of
all days?” gleefully questioned Chee.
“Everything is turning out just right, that’s a fact,” replied her cousin.
A thought of half suspicion came to Chee. “You don’t suppose—”
she began, impressively, when Gertrude gave a little cry of pleasure,
saying, “If here doesn’t come Herman, the old dear, and the house
all to ourselves.”
What a day of it they had! With only her two good friends to watch
her, Chee forgot her usual reserve, and quite surprised them with her
happy chatter. Without the restraint of Aunt Mean’s practical
presence, some of the child’s queer fancies and odd expressions
crept into her talk. Until then, Gertrude had but half realized how truly
the little cousin’s nature was made up of the sensitive perceptions
and legendary instincts of her mother’s people.
Toward evening a thunder-storm threatened. The three were sitting
in Aunt Mean’s plant-room at the time.
“Grandfather is speaking,” said Chee, pleasantly, as the first distant
mutterings of thunder were heard. Cousin Herman looked up
questioningly.
“Who?” asked Gertrude.
“Grandfather—don’t you hear him?”
Just then a sharp clap rang through the air. Gertrude held her fingers
to her ears.
“That was M’dessun,” said Chee. Then noticing her companions’
bewildered glances, added, “It’s very easy to know his voice from
grandfather’s other sons’—he talks so angrily.”
The thunder still roared. Mr. Farrar closed the plant-room door. “I
guess we hadn’t better sit out here for awhile,” he said, gathering up
Gertrude’s books. “We can come back, it won’t last long, I think.”
“Don’t go! What made you shut the door? I love to hear them,” and
Chee stepped out into the rising storm fearlessly, as though the sky
had been all sunshine.
“Come in, Chee. Oh, do come in!” cried Gertrude, pale with alarm.
The child ran quickly, and throwing her arms around her cousin,
asked, “Why, are you sick? What is the matter? Don’t you like
Thunder? He is our grandfather, you know.”
“Is the girl crazy?” asked Mr. Farrar.