158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these 

 positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are sim- 

 ply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place auto- 

 matically in the organism, and that, to take an extreme illustration 

 the feeling (?) we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but 

 a symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of 

 the act. We are conscious automata." (The italics in the above quo- 

 tation are the present writer's.) This passage, published in 1874, will 

 remain unique as an attempt to " get on " in our examination of man 

 without consciousness. Consciousness is a collateral product of brain- 

 change. Whatever may be meant by " collateral," it can not be so 

 one-sided an affair as to save the break in physical continuity pre- 

 viously described. If consciousness be at all the product of brain- 

 changes, it appears, and must appear, as a stranger to these changes, 

 destitute of a single one of their features. Further, and with sincere 

 deference, I would say that the reasoning in the passage before us 

 seems to me peculiar. Consciousness is produced by brain-changes ; 

 nay more, these are the sole cause of consciousness, and yet there is 

 no ground to believe that consciousness in its turn ever occasions brain- 

 changes or muscular movements. Volition is not the cause of a volun- 

 tary act, but a token that such an act is taking place. This would be 

 termed in logic a contradiction, both in form and matter. 



When we are told that consciousness is completely without the 

 power of modifying the working of our body, we do, indeed, feel that 

 consciousness might as well give up and cease to be ; at the same time 

 we know that consciousness, in the shape of volition, is adjusting, direct- 

 ing, and in manifold other ways modifying our organism from day 

 to day. My reason for bringing up this disposition of consciousness 

 was not so much to show its deficiency (which has been well done by 

 Dr. Carpenter and others), as to insist upon the fact that consciousness 

 is not susceptible of scientific treatment by any physical or physiologi- 

 cal method. I wished also to show that no half-way recognition of 

 consciousness would meet the demands of investigation. Perhaps the 

 chiefest benefit to come from the physiological psychology of our day 

 will be in this, that it will make unmistakably clear its own inadequacy 

 for a treatment of consciousness as such. I trust I may not be misun- 

 derstood in this remark. I yield to no one in the belief that an ines- 

 timable advantage has been conferred on psychology by physiology. 

 It is now possible to study the sensations, both general and special, with 

 a thoroughness unknown a few years since. The intimacy of connec- 

 tion between brain-changes and what we term soul-states has been 

 once and for all established and proclaimed. Much may be accom- 

 plished toward a localization of functions in the hemispheres ; the time 

 may even come when people at large shall know that most of their 

 stupidity, peevishness, and sin, results from unhealthful brain-activity. 

 The relation between digestion, ventilation, sleep, and morals, may 



