ORIGIN OF MAN 215 



than half an automaton in all we do day by day. All 

 routine is done without giving us any call for reflection, 

 choosing or changing the order of routine. We dress in 

 the morning automatically, it may be thinking about 

 other things all the time, we eat our breakfast, go off to 

 the city, work for hours, as matters come before us, as 

 clerks or managers ; we regularly return by the same 

 train, seizing our familiar corner, and so on till we go to 

 bed. It is practical automatism throughout. Volition is 

 more or less in abeyance and is rarely called upon for a 

 deliberate choice. 



Nevertheless the will is there, always ready at a 

 moment's notice to decide upon an act of importance 

 which brings alternatives of procedure before us. We 

 pass out of the automatic into the volitional state at a 

 moment's notice as occasion requires. Animals never 

 can. They are always automatic. 



Now let us see what are the consequences of this con- 

 sciousness of having the power of being able to grasp an 

 abstract idea ; that is one about anything which does 

 not come within the cognisance of the senses. ^ 



The first result is that Man can think of himself, that 

 is, his " conscious soul," as we call it, or the Ego. Hence 

 man alone can be self-conscious, realising his own person- 

 ality as something other than his body. 



The next step is that he realises the existence of 

 similar souls in his fellowmen and women ; that each has 

 his or her Ego, too. 



Next, when he sees works in Nature very much after 

 the fashion of his own or of other men, or when he 

 realises that he has power to move himself and other 



^ For convenience I limit the meaning to this application ; though 

 of course the word " goodness " is an abstraction in a different sense 

 from " God ". 



