THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 28 r 



its automatism (as in ordinary walking), which those animals do 

 not possess whose locomotion is purely mechanical; initiating, 

 directing, regulating, and checking its actions, with such direct- 

 ness that many have maintained that because they were voluntary 

 in the first instance, they must always remain so — a position 

 which seems to me as unscientific as the doctrine I have already 

 combated, that because actions adapted to a purpose are per- 

 formed automatically by a frog, the actions which man executes 

 with a determinate intention are really automatic. The human 

 Ego can even turn to his own account certain parts of his origin- 

 ally automatic mechanism. Thus, although his will does not 

 extend so far into the penetralia of his organism, as to enable him 

 to influence the motions of his heart or alimentary canal, and 

 although, if he try ever so hard, he cannot suspend the act of 

 breathing to the extent of asphyxiating himself, he can so regulate 

 his expirations as to make them subservient to those vocal utter- 

 ances which express, by a mechanism that has to be trained to its 

 work, the thoughts and feelings of his mind. 



But when we have been thus led to recognize in the cerebrum, 

 not the original centre of the whole nervous activity of the body, 

 but a superadded organ, in which our sensorial experiences are 

 registered, through the instrumentality of which they give rise to 

 the states of consciousness designated as emotions and ideas, and 

 by whose downward action expression is given to the determina- 

 tions of the Ego, it may still be plausibly maintained that the 

 whole series of " molecular motions " of which it is the seat, must 

 take place in accordance with certain fixed and definite physical 

 laws ; and that it is utterly unscientific to suppose that mind can 

 intervene to modify them. 



That there is a mechanism of thought and feeling, the action 

 of which forms part of tlie Hfe of the body, which gives rise to 

 that succession of thoughts and feelings wherein* the life of the 

 mind may be said to consist, and which goes on, when left to 

 itself, according to its original constitution, modified by the 

 influences subsequently brought to bear upon it, can be doubted 

 by no psychologist who is also a physiologist. The cerebrum, as 

 was first pointed out by Dr. Laycock, has a reflex action of its 

 own, analogous to that of the lower centres, but determined as to 



