334 Oil Animal Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man, 



still higher powers of self-consciousness and reason have in Man a sim- 

 ilar connection with the same kind of mechanism. The nature of thi> 

 connection in itself Is equally mysterious, and, indeed, inconceivable 

 in either case. As a matter of fact, we have precisely the same evi- 

 dence as to both. If painful and pleasurable emotions can be destroy- 

 ed by the cutting of a nerve, so also can the powers of memory and of 

 reason be destroyed by an injury or disease which affects some bits of 

 the substance of the brain. If, however, the fact of this mysterious con- 

 nection'be so interpreted as to make us alter our conceptiims of what self- 

 consciousness and reason, and all mental manifestations in themselves 

 are, then, indeed, we may well be jealous — not of the facts, but of the 

 illogical use which is often made of them. Self-consciousness and reason 

 and affection, and fear, and pain and pleasure, are in themselves exactly 

 what we have always known them to be ; and no discovery as to the 

 physical apparatus v>'ith which they are somehow connected can throw 

 the smallest obscurity on the criteria by which they are to be identi- 

 fied as so many different phenomena of mind. Our old knowledge of 

 the work done is in no way altered by any new inforraation as to the 

 apparatus by which it is affected. This is the bungle committed by 

 those who think they can found a new Psychology on the knife. 

 They seem to think that sensation and memory, and reasoning and 

 will, become something difierent from that which hitherto we have 

 known them to be, when we have found out that each of these powers 

 may have some special "seat" or "organ" in the body. This, however, 

 is a pure delusion. The known element in psychology is always the 

 nature of the mental faculty ; the unknown element is always the na- 

 ture of its connection with any organ. We know the operations of 

 our own minds with a fulness and reality which does not belong to any 

 other knowledge whatever. We do not know the bond of union be- 

 tween these operations and the brain, except as a sort of external and 

 wholly unintelligible fact. Remembering all this, then, we need not 

 fear or shrink from the admission that Man is a reasoning and self-con- 

 scious machine, just in the same sense in which the lower animals are 

 machines which have been made to exhibit and possess certain mental 

 faculties of a lower class. 



But what of this ? What is the value of this conclusion ? Its value 

 would be small indeed if this conception of ourselves as machines could 

 be defended only by a harmless metaphor. But there is far more to 

 be said for it, and about it, than this. The conception is one which is 

 not only harmless, but profoundly true, as all metaphors are when they 

 are securely rooted in the Homologies of Nature. There is much to " 

 be learned from that aspect of mind in which we regard its powers as 



