THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 289 



the investigation of " residual phenomena" has been a most fertile 

 means of discovery in regard to agencies not previously suspected. 

 And until it shall have been proved that there are no human 

 actions which cannot be accounted for by " unconditional 

 " sequence," such an assumption cannot be admitted as an ade- 

 quate disproof of the testimony borne by human consciousness 

 to the opposite effect. " It is impossible for me to think," says 

 Mr. Sidgwick {iip. cit. p. 51), "in the moment of deliberate 

 "volition, that my volition is completely determined by my formed 

 " character and the motives acting upon it. The opposite con- 

 "viction is so strong as to be absolutely unshaken by the evidence 

 "brought against it. I cannot believe it to be illusory. . . . No 

 "amount of experience of the sway of motives even tends to make 

 " me distrust my intuitive consciousness, that in resolving after 

 " deliberation I exercise free choice as to which of the motives 

 " acting on me shall prevail. Nothing short of absolute proof that 

 " this consciousness is erroneous, could overcome the force with 

 " which it announces itself as certain ; and I cannot perceive tliat 

 '•'such proof has been given." 



It is alleged, indeed, that the belief entertained by all men — 

 except philosophers — in their own freedom of choice (within 

 certain limits) between different modes of action, is an illusion of 

 ignorant "common sense," which, like the vulgar belief that the 

 sun moves round the earth, is utterly dispelled by the light of 

 science. But the two beliefs rest upon an entirely different basis. 

 The latter, like other erroneous beliefs which arise in the exercise 

 of our senses, is an inference from the facts of consciousness, which 

 a more enlarged experience (such as that afforded by almost every 

 railway-journey) shows to be untenable : the former is the imme- 

 diate affirmation of consciousness itself, the assurance of which, its 

 constant recurrence under a great variety of conditions only serves 

 to confirm. 



The direct testimony of consciousness as to any one of its 

 primal cognitions, must be held, as it seems to me, of higher 

 account than the deductions of reason from data afforded by other 

 cognitions ; constituting, in fact, a " base of verification " to which 

 all our logical triangulation must be worked back, if we desire to 

 test its validity. And no fact of consciousness as to which man- 



