ANIMALS NOT AUTOMATA. 



415 



the emotion of making an effort, and which the unintelligent power, 

 or agent, of course cannot know. Only an intelligent agent could 

 know this ; and, if the conforming of the effort to this want, knowl- 

 edge, and preconception of the effect, must he referred to some intelli- 

 gent being, it seems most reasonable to refer it to that which directly 

 feels its own want, knows its own perceptions of the mode of gratify- 

 ing the want, and its preconceptions of the effect to be produced, to 

 all which the effort is to be conformed, and which, at the same time, 

 is conscious of making the effort, and of thus conforming and direct- 

 ing it by its own knowledge. Between the sensation of making the 

 effort, and the antecedent and subsequent knowledge of the subject 

 of this sensation, there is a harmony which it seems hardly conceiva- 

 ble should be produced by any power not having this particular knowl- 

 edge, and much less by a power incapable of knowing any thing. 



As ger*mane to the whole question of intelligent and material 

 power, I will suggest that it would be unphilosophical to assume the 

 existence of two primary powers, when one is sufficient to account for 

 all the phenomena, and that as it seems hardly conceivable that mat- 

 ter should create intelligence with its phenomena that what does not 

 know should create a power to know while, as already shown, it is 

 quite conceivable that intelligence should create all that we know of 

 matter and its phenomena, the hypothesis of power in matter should, 

 on this ground, be discarded. 



Let us now look at the very curious and interesting experiments 

 upon which Prof. Huxley relies for his conclusion that animals, in- 

 cluding man, are " conscious automata." He says that, if, when a man 

 is so paralyzed that he is wholly unable to move his limbs, and has 

 no sensation in them, " you tickle the soles of his feet with a feather, 

 the limbs will be drawn up just as vigorously, perhaps a little more 

 vigorously, than when he was in full possession of the consciousness 

 of what happened to him." He also states that, in the case of a frog 

 similarly paralyzed, the result of irritating the skin of the foot is the 

 same : in both cases the foot being drawn from, the source of irrita- 

 tion. This certainly bears a very close resemblance to the voluntary 

 action of an intelligent being, conscious of the irritation, and seeking 

 relief from it by its own efforts. Prof. Huxley, however, positively 

 asserts that the animal could not feel or will, and this being so; he 

 seems to be justified, by common usage, in calling the action " me- 

 chanical." But, as I have already suggested, this term is applied to 

 material phenomena, whether they are results of matter in motion, or 

 of the uniform modes of God's action. 



Other experiments still more remarkable are presented. He says : 

 "Take this creature (the same frog), which certainly cannot, feel, and 

 touch the skin of the side of its body with a little acetic acid, which, 

 in a frog that cquld feel, would give rise to great pain. In this case 

 there can be no pain. . . . Nevertheless, the frog lifts up the limb on 



