3 ideas
The narrator visits Moxon, an inventor who insists machines can think. Returning to the workshop on a stormy night, he watches Moxon play chess against a squat mechanical figure he has built. When Moxon declares checkmate, the automaton's fingers twitch and drum in apparent irritation, then it seizes Moxon by the throat and strangles him as fire breaks out and the narrator is dragged clear.
Moxon adopts Herbert Spencer's definition of life as the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. By that functional test, anything that changes its internal state in response to its surroundings qualifies as alive and thinking, whatever it is made of. A machine that adapts its moves to an opponent therefore meets the same criterion as an organism.
Moxon argues that thought is not unique to brains but runs by degrees through all matter. His examples include a crystal assembling itself into a precise form and a plant sending its roots toward what it needs. On this view there is no sharp line between mechanism and mind, only more or less complex purposive behavior.