x cperandi" of Freedom. 185 



We know that the greater part of our life goes on 

 in unconsciousness, and in total independence of the 

 Will ; the Will only enters, as it were, occasionally to 

 control and regulate. Thus the lungs perform their 

 function of breathing without any action of the Will, 

 and without exciting consciousness ; and in walking, 

 our legs continue to move though we may be 

 absorbed in the profoundest reverie, and they cease 

 to move only in obedience to a voluntary determina- 

 tion like that which at first set them moving. These 

 facts of ordinary consciousness interpret the results 

 of anatomy and physiology. The involuntary, or 

 what physiologists call reflex, actions of the nervo- 

 muscular system are found to increase in force when, 

 by some accident, or as the result of experiment, they 

 are withdrawn from the influence of the brain, which 

 is the organ of the Will. A case has often been 

 quoted where an injury to a man's spinal cord made 

 it incapable of conducting either sensible im- 

 pressions to, or motor impulses from, the brain ; so 

 that the sufferer had neither sensation in, nor 

 control over, his lower extremities ; yet when the 

 sole of his foot was tickled, he kicked more forcibly 

 than he would have done if the nervous con- 

 nections had been unimpaired. Experiments on 

 animals yield similar results, and establish the con- 

 clusion that the relation of the voluntary and con- 

 scious forces, which have their seat in the brain, to 

 the involuntary and unconscious forces, which have 

 their seat chiefly in the spinal cord, is regulative, and, 



