The Scottish Naturalist 205 



what I do, as the needle to point to the north, or the puppet to 

 move according as the string is pulled." This is as false to fact 

 as it is grovelling. The order of man's inner nature, as can be 

 ascertained with certainty, is quite the reverse. The sequence 

 of his thoughts and the resultant actions are determinable by 

 will. In the words of Mr. Huxley, elsewhere than in the Fort- 

 nightly Review : " Our volition counts for something as a 

 condition of the course of events " (Phys. Basis of Life). It 

 counts for that tremendous something, the rendering man a 

 self-regulated intelligence, and a self-determined agent — that is 

 to say, a man, and not a puppet. Huxley's other statement 

 about the nonentity of volition will hold, however, of animals. 

 They may take up the above language of H. G. Atkinson and 

 H. Martineau. In them volition counts for nothing. It does 

 not enter into the chain of causation of their actions. In them 

 the connection between the idea, or feeling, or stimulus, and 

 the action is immediate, predetermined, and necessary. There 

 is no self-control — "no choice between action and inaction" 

 (Goodsir). In the words of Carpenter, " there is no evidence 

 that any of the lower animals have a voluntary power of guid- 

 ing, restraining, or accelerating their mental operations at all 

 similar to that which man possesses" (Hum. Phys. p. 771., and 

 Mental Phys. p. 105. and 377). But Huxley's protean philoso- 

 phy, true again to itself, had said, in the Comtemporary Review, 

 " There is as good evidence that animals possess powers of 

 emotion and volition as sensation, and as good evidence that 

 they possess all these as there is that man possesses them." 

 These, for the most prominent physiologist of the day, are rash 

 words. It would be a strange philosophy, of which such tam- 

 pering with " evidence " would not be unworthy. What is the 

 evidence that animal action, in any of the conditions of it, is free 

 and self-determined. It is harmless enough, in an easy and 

 popular way of speaking, to allow animals wills of their own. 

 But when, in scientific discussion, Mr. Huxley, and others who, 

 it may be, are otherwise far from his platform, such as Dr. Leitch 

 (Ethics of Theism, p. 373, seqq.), and Max Miiller (Lect. 

 on Science of Lang. 1. Lect. ix.), ascribe the faculty of will to 

 animals, there is the want either of vigorous definition, or of 

 adequate evidence. If man be not the only second cause in the 

 universe, he is the only second cause that is voluntary and free. 

 3. The absence of self-consciousness and voluntary agency 

 must leave the whole mental faculties, whether subservient to 



