x that Will can be an Agent. 195 



appear impossible and absurd. Nevertheless, it has 

 been accepted by Professor Huxley 1 and many 

 others of the same school, and is known as the 

 theory of Automatism. It may be thus stated : 

 " Consciousness may no doubt be a result of physical 

 action, as when an object of sight affects the nerves 

 of the eye. But when Consciousness appears, in its 

 turn, to be a cause of physical action, as when a 

 determination of will to move is followed by bodily 

 motion, this is an illusion. Such mental determina- 

 tion is nothing more than the accompaniment and 

 the sign of the flow of a nervous current in the brain, 

 which might have produced the same result of mus- 

 cular motion without any consciousness being awak- 

 ened. The action of the legs of the patient who 

 kicked violently in response to tickling which he 

 could not feel, is the type of all nervous and muscular 

 action whatever. All muscular action, whether 

 conscious or unconscious, goes on as if in unconscious- 

 ness." 



This is, no doubt, a paradox ; but many paradoxes 

 are true. To go no farther than our present subject, 

 it is a paradox that Will cannot produce nervous or 

 muscular energy ; yet it is all but certain that Will 

 cannot produce energy, and can at most only direct 

 it. But the paradox which the theory of Automatism 

 requires us to believe, is not only great, but enormous 



1 See his address on Automatism at the Belfast Meeting of 

 the British Association, as- published in the Fortnightly Revieiv, 

 November 1874. 



