108 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



mals are ''mere machines." Machines they may be: 

 it is the qualification which does not fit. I suppose 

 that by saying "mere" machines it is meant to imply 

 that they have the soulless, steely quality of a ma- 

 chine which goes when it is set going, stops when an- 

 other lever is turned, acts only in obedience to outer 

 stimuli, and is in fact unemotional — a bundle of 

 operations without any quality meriting the name of 

 a self. 



It is true that the further we push our analysis of 

 animal behaviour, the more we fmd it composed of a 

 series of automatisms, the more we see it rigorously 

 determined by combination of inner constitution and 

 outer circumstance, the more we have cause to deny 

 to animals the possession of anything deserving the 

 name of reason, ideals, or abstract thought. The 

 more, in fact, do they appear to us as mechanisms 

 (which is a much better word than machines, since 

 this latter carries with it definite connotations of 

 metal or wood, electricity or steam). They are mech- 

 anisms, because their mode of operation is regular; 

 but they differ from any other type of mechanism 

 known to us in that their working is — to put it in the 

 most non-committal way — accompanied by emotion. 

 It is, to be sure, a combination of emotion with rea- 

 son that we attribute to a soul; but none the less, in 

 popular parlance at least, the emotional side is pre- 

 dominant, and pure reason is set over against the 

 emotional content which gives soul its essence. And 



