THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 285 



with one vigorous blow any opponent unprepared for his pecuHar 

 mode of attack. Relying exclusively upon physical experiences, 

 Professor Clifford affirmed without the smallest hesitation,* that as 

 the only thing which can possibly be conceived to influence matter 

 is either the position or the motion of surrounding matter, the 

 statement "that the will influences matter" is simply " nonsense ;" 

 an affirmation which assumes that Professor Clifford knows all 

 about matter and its dynamical relations, and therefore has an 

 unquestionable right to say that mankind at large are wrong in the 

 conviction that the movements of their bodies are in any way 

 directed by their minds. 



From the confidence with which what are asserted to be the 

 inevitable conclusions of physiological science are now advanced 

 in proof of the doctrine of human automatism, it might be supposed 

 that some new facts of pecuhar importance had been discovered, 

 or some more cogent deductions drawn from the facts previously 

 known. But after an attentive re-examination of the whole ques- 

 tion, I find nothing in the results of more recent researches to 

 shake the conviction at which I arrived nearly forty 5^ears ago,t of 

 the existence of a fundamental distinction, not only between the 

 rational actions of sentient beings guided by experience, and the 

 automatic movements of creatures whose whole life is obviously 

 but the working of a mechanism, — but also between those actions 

 (common to man and intelligent brutes) which are determined by 

 a preponderating attraction towards an object present to the con- 

 sciousness, and those (peculiar, as I believe, to man) in which 

 there is, at one stage or another, that distinct purposive interven- 

 tion of the self-conscious Ego which we designate will, whereby the 

 direction of the activity is modified. 



What modern research seems to me to have done, is to eluci- 

 date the mechanism of automatic action ; to define with greater 

 precision the share it takes in the diversified phenomena of animal 

 life, psychical as well as physical ; and to introduce a more scientific 

 mode of thought into the physiological part of the inquiry. But 

 in so far as those who profess to be its expositors ignore the funda- 



* Fortnightly Revinv, December, 1874, p. 728. 



t '* On the Voluntary and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings," in the 

 Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, No. 132 (1837). 



