14 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



but calculate; Voltaire is unwearied in the slaughter of all things that 

 are transcendent and too high for us so that we cannot attain unto 

 them ; La Mettrie looks for salvation in efficient causes and developes 

 the Cartesian formula into the notorious phrase "man the machine"; 

 Cabanis meditated on the heads that were severed by the guillotine 

 from their bodies, and noted in the opening and closing of the eyes a 

 proof of the fact that bodily movement may be independent of will. 

 The famous phrase created by Cabanis when he declared that "the 

 brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile," was in essence only 

 the formula of a scientific method ; it became in fact a bitter reproach 

 as it gradually took on the character of a materialistic dogma. 



Such was the general drift of thought. What was its total 

 meaning ? Perhaps the truest estimate would be given by saying 

 that men passed from dislike of the superhuman to glorification of the 

 human, and thence slipped by imperceptible degrees to a lower level 

 where the merely human became itself extraordinary. In a maze of 

 complicated machinery all sense of simplicity vanished; reality could 

 not be seen through the mist of representative ideas; benevolence 

 could not be conceived as even possible in a world of self-seeking 

 tempered only by hypocrisy; law, order, and government became 

 inexplicable absurdities in view of the fact that the world, never very 

 intelligible, was now openly regarded as having no intelligence to give 

 its procedure significance. Paley might argue to infinity about the 

 watch that resembled the universe and testified to intelligent workman- 

 ship, but for the average man the results were negative; neither the 

 world nor the watch mattered, for space and time were both alike 

 meaningless. 



Speaking very generally one may safely assert that the Cartesian 

 doctrine of "animal-machines" affected the eighteenth century deeply. 

 The results may be summed up as follows : Firstly, there is a direct 

 line of development from the Cartesian formulae to the epoch-making 

 work done at the close of the century on reflex action; before the 

 nineteenth century was more than a year old every man of intelligence 

 might know that a large part of his organism was wholly beyond the 

 reach of his will or his intelligent control. Parallel with this physiol- 

 ogical progress there goes a steady development of psychological 

 theory toward a practical acknowledgment that man is wholly made 

 by circumstances; his mind is the accumulated mass of his ideas, 

 the alluvial deposit of a lifetime. Lastly, morals and politics caught 

 the contagion; the moral standards became less and less distinguish- 

 able from the bald record of customs, and made little headway against 

 the growing conviction that "what is, is right"; political theory, 



