ANIMALS NOT AUTOMATA. 



4 1 / 



tion of your hand, and the frog, so long as you are reasonably slow in 

 your movements, will work backward and forward like a clock.'''' Re- 

 ferring to this experiment, Prof. Huxley afterward says: "If the frog 

 were a philosopher he might reason thus : ' I feel myself uncomfortable 

 and slipping, and, feeling myself uncomfortable, I put my legs out to 

 save myself, knowing that I shall tumble if I do not put them farther. 

 I put them farther still, and my volition brings about all these beau- 

 tiful adjustments which result in my sitting safely! ' But, if the frog 

 so reasoned, he would be entirely mistaken, for the frog does the thing 

 just as well when he has no reason, no sensation, no possibility of 

 thought of any kind. The only conclusion, then, at which there seems 

 any good ground for arriving is, that animals are machines, but that 

 they are conscious machines." And he afterward says : " Undoubt- 

 edly, I do hold that the view I have taken of the relations between 

 the physical and mental faculties of brutes applies in its fullness and 

 entirety to man." Of this last experiment Prof. Huxley further says : 

 "And what is still more wonderful is, that if you put the frog on a 

 table, and put a book between him and the light, and give him a little 

 jog behind, he will jump (take a long jump, very possibly), but he 

 won't jump against the book, he will jump to the right or to the left, 

 but he will get out of the way, showing that, although he is absolutely 

 insensible to ordinary impressions of light, there is still something 

 which passes through the sensory nerve, acts upon the machinery of 

 his nervous system, and causes it to adapt itself to the proper action." 

 This is certainly very wonderful, and becomes even more so when 

 taken in connection with the next case that of a man who had been 

 shot in the head, and who, Prof. Huxley says, "is in a condition abso- 

 lutely parallel to that of the frog," but afterward says, " very nearly " 

 in the same condition, and also says, " he has only one sense organ in 

 a state of activity, namely, that of touch, w r hich is exceedingly deli- 

 cate." Yet of this man, thus described as virtually in the same condi- 

 tion as the frog, except that he has a very delicate sense of touch, we 

 are told that, " if an obstacle is put in his way, he knocks against it, 

 feels it, and goes to one side ; if you push him in any direction, he 

 goes straight on until something stops him." 



It is certainly very remarkable that the frog, with no sense at all, 

 avoids leaping against the obstruction, while the man, with a delicate 

 sense of touch, and other conditions parallel or very nearly the same 

 as the frog, knocks against it. It must be a very curious mechanism 

 which can make such discrimination in the effects of its action. 



Let us examine the case of the frog a little further. Prof. Huxley 

 ascribes its leaping obliquely and not directly forward to " a some- 

 thing which passes through the sensory nerve, acts upon the machinery 

 of his nervous system, and causes it to adapt itself to the proper ac- 

 tion," and this " although he is absolutely insensible to ordinary im- 

 pressions of light." Does Prof. Huxley mean that this " something " 



vol. vi. 27 



