THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 279 



which show that when any part of the spinal cord has been cut off 

 from the brain by disease or injury, the portion of the body below 

 the point of section loses its sensibility, and that whatever action 

 its muscles may be excited to perform, such action is not only 

 independent of the will, but incapable of being controlled by it. 

 But when he argues from the fact that because certain actions of 

 a frog which appear to be purposive are really automatic, similar 

 actions of man which express the determinations of the conscious 

 Ego really result from the working of an unconscious mechanism, 

 he not only ignores, but distinctly repudiates, the very experience 

 on which he previously built. For even if it could be shown that 

 the spinal cord of man can do all that the same organ does in the 

 frog — if, for example, on the application of an irritant to one of 

 the legs of a paraplegic patient, the other leg were to be raised and 

 crossed, so as to rub it off, — such a fact would give us no right to 

 say that when either this or any other movement is executed in 

 response to a conscious determination of the Ego, such conscious 

 determination has nothing at all to do with it. All that could be 

 legitimately inferred from it would be, that the automatic apparatus 

 is competent to perform this feat, and that when the conscious 

 Ego executes it by what we call the mandate of his will, he uses 

 the automatic apparatus as its instrument. 



The doctrine that the Ego puts the body in movement, not 

 (as formerly taught) by its immediate voluntary control over the 

 muscles, but by its power of making the automatic apparatus 

 perform anything that lies within its capacity — whether original 

 or acquired — accords with all the phenomena, physical, as well 

 as psychical ; whilst the doctrine of pure automatism, based 

 entirely on the physical, is in direct opposition to the psychicah 

 Let us take the act of coughing as an example ; this being, per- 

 haps, the most purpose-like of all the originally automatic actions 

 performed by adult man. We admire the combination of the 

 closure of the glottis with explosive expiration, as perfectly 

 adapted to get rid of any offending matter which has found its 

 way into the air-passages ; and at the same time we recogni::e the 

 fact that this combination is madeyv^r us and not by us, and that, 

 when the stimulus is present in sufficient force, we must execute 

 it, however strong may be our desire to restrain it. But our 



