CHAP. XI.] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CAT. 383 



imniments of bodily actions, but arc themselves guides and directing 

 agencies which intervene and operate upon, though they do not 

 break through, the circle of its bodily actions. The feeling of the 

 blow of a stick, or the sight of a threatened blow, will change the 

 course of action which a cat would otherwise have pursued. That it 

 is the feeling or the sight of the stick, together with the various 

 passed feelings or imaginations which such fresh experience calls up, 

 which causes the change, will be disputed by no one who has not 

 some eccentric thesis to maintain. 



But the movements of the animal are also determined (like our 

 own) by a multitude of organic influences which, are not felt, though, 

 they operate through the nervous system (being thus parallel with 

 those which are felt) and form part of the immaterial chain which 

 accompanies the chain of physical modifications which take place 

 during its life. Thus, again, we see that the animal is a creature of 

 activities which are partly physical and material, partly psychical 

 and immaterial, of which the latter — both the felt and the unfelt — 

 are directive, though they are in turn influenced by physical modifi- 

 cations. We may compare this reciprocal influence to the altera- 

 tions in the shape of a ring formed of two inseparably united metals 

 which contract unequally at the same temperatures — alterations 

 in either constituent affecting the compound whole, and therefore 

 aff'ecting the other constituent also. 



The notion that an animal is a mere automaton in which the 

 physical action alone enters into the chain of causation, has been 

 supported by comparing its psychical activities to mere collateral 

 products of the working of a machine, such as the sound of the 

 steam engine's whistle. Against this, Mr. Lawes has urged* as 

 follows: "The feeling which accompanies or follows a particular 

 movement cannot, indeed, modify that movement, since that is 

 already set a going, or has passed ; but the analogy fails in the 

 subsequent history : no movements whatever of the steam engine 

 are modified by the whistle which accompanies the working of that 

 engine ; yet how the reflected influence modifies the working of the 

 organism ! ^ If the hand be passing over a surface, there is, accom- 

 panying this movement, a succession of muscular and tactile feelings 

 which may be said to be collateral products. But the feeling which 

 accompanies one muscular contraction is itself the stiniuhis of the 

 next contraction ; if anywhere during the passage the hand comes 

 on the surface which is wet, or rough, the change in feeling thus 

 produced, although a collateral product of the movement, instantly 

 c-hanges the direction of the hand, suspends or alters its course — that 

 is to say, the collateral jjroduct of one movement becomes a directinrj 

 factor in the succeeding movement." This is what no automaton could 

 eff'ect. Sensation is of the essence of the process, and is evidently 



a " cause " 



What light is thrown upon this subject by our own knowledge of 



* Physical Basis of Miud, p. 407. 



