THE AUTOMATON HYPOTHESIS 361 



601. Like Huxley and Clifford, many modern writers insist on 

 " these two notions, of the absolute separateness of mind and matter, 

 and of the invariable concomitance of a mental change with a 

 bodily change." l " But this ' concomitance ' in the midst of ' absolute 

 separateness ' is an utterly irrational idea. It is, to my mind, quite 

 inconceivable that consciousness should have nothing to do with a 

 business that it so faithfully attends." 2 ... "To comprehend 

 completely the consequences of the dogma so confidently enunciated, 

 one should unflinchingly apply it to the most complicated 

 examples. The movements of our tongues and pens, the flashings 

 of our eyes in conversation, are of course events of a material order, 

 and as such their antecedents must be exclusively material. If we 

 knew thoroughly the nervous system of Shakespeare, and as 

 thoroughly all his environing conditions, we should be able to show 

 why at a certain period of his life his hand came to trace on certain 

 sheets of paper those crabbed little black marks which we for short- 

 ness' sake call the manuscript of Hamlet. We should understand 

 the rationale of every erasure and alteration therein, and we should 

 understand all this without in the slightest degree acknowledging 

 the existence of the thoughts in Shakespeare's mind. The words 

 and sentences would be taken, not as signs of anything beyond 

 themselves, but as little outward facts, pure and simple. In like 

 manner we might exhaustively write the biography of those two 

 hundred pounds, more or less, of warmish albuminoid matter called 

 Martin Luther, without ever implying that it felt. 



" But, on the other hand, nothing in all this could prevent us 

 from giving an equally complete account of either Luther's or 

 Shakespeare's spiritual history, an account in which every gleam 

 of thought and emotion should find its place. The mind-history 

 would run along the side of the body-history of each man, and 

 each point in the one would correspond to, but not react upon, a 

 point in the other. So the melody floats from the harp-string, but 

 neither checks nor quickens its vibrations ; so the shadow runs 

 alongside the pedestrian, but in no way influences his steps." 3 



" My conclusion is that to urge the automaton theory upon us, 

 as it is now urged, on purely a priori and ^^-metaphysical 

 grounds, is an unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of 

 psychology." 4 



1 Chas. Mercier, The Nervous System and the Mind, p. 1 1 . 



2 James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. p. 136. 



3 James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. pp. 132-3. 

 *Op. '/., vol. i. p. 138. 



