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tills In the Fact that when (he vessels immediately 

 surrounding the eye are relaxed and distended with 

 lymph, in consequence of long and severe exercise 

 of the organ, the sight becomes dim, the eye will 

 not adjust itself, and small objects are seen double. 

 One of the most immediate remedies for this is the 

 application of a sponge soaked in a solution of salt 5 

 and this acts by drying up and giving tone to the 

 parts, so that the delicate muscles, which adapt the 

 form of the eye so nicely to its purpose, are again 

 enabled to act. We know that salt applied to a 

 muscle will make it contract, whether the nerves of 

 that muscle are or are not removed ; and therefore 

 this application of salt, as a tonic to the region of 

 the eye, obviously gives an artificial power of con- 

 traction to those muscles which had been exhausted 

 and relaxed by excessive use. 



From this, and from a countless number of other 

 instances which could be enumerated, it appears that 

 the impressions made by objects of sensation, are really 

 addressed to the muscles, and not to the brain through 

 the nerves, however necessary a healthy state of the 

 nervous system may be to the proper performance of 

 the functions of the muscles, in sensation as well as 

 in action. Indeed it is difficult to understand how 

 there can be any pause or medium between sensation 

 and action in an animal which proceeds upon instinct, 

 and not. upon the judgment of experience, which in 

 all cases requires deliberation. In man, where there 

 is an intellectual principle, to make the comparison 

 and draw the conclusion, we must admit that sensal 

 perception, intellectual judgment and decision, and 

 bodily action, are the three parts of the com- 

 pound process, when that process is complete. But 

 it is probable that, even in man, the operation of the 

 middle part may sometimes be left out, and man may 

 play the animal ; and we have stated already that 

 there are other cases in which from habit the mental 

 part of the process is unheeded. 



But when we return to the animal, and consider 

 its case in comparison with the complete case in man, 

 which is always our natural standard in these matters, 

 we do not see how there can be any middle part of 

 the process in the animal, unless we attribute this 

 part to something mental ; and as the want of the 

 grand characteristic of mind in all mammalia, even the 

 most sagacious the total absence of any tendency to 

 communicate experimental knowledge among them- 

 selves, or to hand it down from generation to genera- 

 tion, each generation adding its part to the general 

 mass, forbids us from coming to the conclusion that 

 any of them can possibly be possessed of mind, we 

 are driven between the horns of a dilemma, and 

 cannot avoid concluding either that the animals are 

 possessed of mental and therefore immortal principles, 

 or that the entire nature of man is material, and lost 

 for ever as regards the individual, in the dissolution of 

 death and the decomposition of the body, in the very 

 same manner as in the other animals. But either of 

 these conclusions is so contrary to the evidence 

 afforded by nature generally, and by the physiological 

 examination of man, that, leaving revelation out of 

 the question, we cannot entertain either, without out- 

 raging every principle of sound philosophy. 



We have direct proofs in some animals, that the 

 power of originating action is riot altogether seated 

 in or directed by that portion of the nervous mass 

 which occupies the skull. Many reptiles can move 

 about after the head is separated, or the spinal marrow 



divided, though their motions are not so regular as 

 when entire ; but this is the case in every mutilation 

 of an animal, and therefore, when an injury is done, 

 we are always warranted to suppose, that if it affects 

 any of the general systems of the body , no matter which, 

 it affects the compound structure of the body, in its 

 functions as a whole, to the very same extent. Many 

 readers must have heard of the archery of the emperor 

 Commodus in the circus. He had his arrows made with 

 a cutting edge, and these he discharged at ostriches 

 driven across the arena, so as to cut off their heads 

 when about mid-way, and they ran headless to the 

 end of their journey. The same has been observed 

 in many other birds, and also in the lower classes of 

 vertebrated animals. In the mammalia the separation 

 of the head, or the division of the spinal marrow, is 

 attended with much more immediate effects, for the 

 animal is instantly thrown into a state of complete 

 stupor ; but still there are some instances in the 

 smaller animals of this stupor wearing off after a little, 

 and the animal making efforts to reach the wound in 

 the neck with the hind feet, so as to alleviate the 

 pain, which animals that have much action of the feet 

 always attempt to do, by bringing the foot to the 

 wounded part if they can reach it. 



From all the evidence which we can collect, indeed, 

 it appears that there is no pause, no intervention of 

 a middle process between the sensation and the action 

 to which the sensation leads. But it does not follow 

 from this, that sensation in animals should in all cases 

 be continued into action, because every animal requires 

 some excitement, and even the same animal requires 

 more excitement in some states than in others. In- 

 deed, it is this necessary connexion between the 

 degree of excitement and the result, as constituting 

 only one state of the animal, which leads us to call 

 the actions of animals instinctive, and which gives 

 them a certainty and a regularity which those of rea- 

 soning man cannot by possibility possess. The animal 

 is not a machine in our sense of the word, that is to 

 say, the working of its system is not mechanical, or 

 chemical, or even compounded of the two, but it is 

 animal, or peculiar to this particular form of created 

 being ; but notwithstanding this, inanimate and inor- 

 ganic matter is not more obedient, or more instantly 

 obedient, to the laws of physics and chemistry than 

 every animal is to the laws of animal life. Those 

 laws varv with generic and specific differences, and 

 circumstances vary them, though less extensively, in 

 the individual ; and we cannot account for the ori- 

 ginal differences of species ; but our ignorance of the 

 same differences is as great in the case of inanimate 

 substances, and our ignorance ought certainly not to 

 be made a ground of argument. 



To enter into any details of the physiology of mind, 

 farther than the general distinction between it and 

 animal action, which has been already hinted at, 

 would be inconsistent with the nature of this article ; 

 but if it is once established that the nervous system, 

 as well as the systems of circulation, nourishment, 

 motion, and all the others which have different organs 

 in the animal structure, are constituent parts of that 

 structure, and that the proper efficacy of each in the 

 performance of its functions, requires the healthiness 

 of the others, just as much as that of itself; then it 

 cannot be pretended that any one system singly can 

 be the seat of voluntary action, or of the cause and 

 stimulus of voluntary action, when that action requires 

 the co-operation of the whole. The more vigorous, 

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