NERVE-FIBRES AND NERVE-CELLS 117 



must grant it a nebular origin. Descartes in the seventeenth 

 century argues that animals are, as we should term them, 

 reflex machines, incapable of feeling pain, or, rather, of 

 knowing that they feel it is very difficult to translate 

 Descartes' metaphysical theories into plain language. He 

 considered that animals feel, but, inasmuch as they do not 

 realise the self which feels, they are conscious automata. 

 "It is my opinion that animals do not see as we see, 

 because we feel [know] that we see." Like somnambulists 

 or men in a hypnotic condition, they respond, without 

 knowing it, to external impressions. Had Descartes known 

 more about the physiology of the nervous system he would 

 have said that all the activities of animals were reflex 

 phenomena, unconscious responses to external stimuli. We 

 find the physiologists of twenty or thirty years ago inclining 

 to the opposite extreme, and constructing a nervous system 

 out of their own consciousness, upon the most approved 

 model of a government department ; every little clump of 

 nerve-cells an office with a certain share of authority and 

 well-defined responsibilities towards the officials higher in 

 command, they imagined that they could find the outer 

 world, as they knew it, mirrored in the inner world, which 

 they did not know ; and seeing that no great administrative 

 department can work effectively, unless there be an exten- 

 sive delegation of authority with an equally elaborate 

 system of surveillance, they allotted duties to various parts 

 of the nervous system according to a similar plan. Their 

 "automatic centres" for the control of the heart and 

 intestines, the movements of respiration, etc., have all been 

 shown the mere reflex mechanisms which they really are. 

 Their little dignity is denied them. They are degraded to the 

 position of centres of reflex action, mere transmitting 

 stations, that is to say. Looking at the matter from the 

 widest point of view, even Man himself is a reflex machine. 

 He is kept awake by the ceaseless impact of external forces. 

 His running to and fro is the mechanical effect which these 



