Psychology of Animals. 201 



superior race of marionettes, which eat without plea- 

 sure, cry without pain, desire nothing, know nothing, 

 and only simulate intelligence as a bee simulates a 

 mathematician ? " 



" I desire", Descartes said, "that you should con- 

 sider that these functions (including mental processes) 

 in the machine naturally proceed from the mere arrange- 

 ments of its organs, neither more nor less than do the 

 movements of a clock or other automaton, from that of 

 its weights and its wheels ; so that, so far as these are 

 concerned, it is not necessary to conceive any other 

 vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of 

 motion or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated 

 by the fire which burns continually in the heart, and 

 which is in no wise essentially different from all the fires 

 which exist in inanimate bodies." 



Could Descartes have known, as we do, the results 

 of experiments on the brain and nervous system, the 

 observations on the life of those who have suffered 

 serious nervous injury through wounds or disease, the 

 researches on the hypnotic and related states, or even 

 the phenomena of chloroforming, he would doubtless 

 have been even more convinced than he was as to the 

 truth of his theory of animal automatism. And yet 

 there are few who would now accept it ! 



The strongest argument against Descartes' position 

 is an indirect one, which we owe to the evolution-idea 

 the conviction of unity and continuity in nature. We 

 cannot for a moment believe that conscious experience 

 began in man. "We know", Huxley says, "that, in 

 the individual man, consciousness grows from a dim 

 glimmer to its full light, whether we consider the infant 

 advancing in years, or the adult emerging from slumber 

 and swoon. We know, further, that the lower animals 

 possess, though less developed, that part of the brain 

 which we have every reason to believe to be the organ 

 of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, func- 

 tion and organ are proportional, so we have a right to 

 conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, 

 though they may not possess our intensity of conscious- 

 ness, and though, from the absence of language, they 



