PARTS AND FUNCTIONS. 61 



inspection, as capable of being ascertained, as the mechanism 

 of the automaton in the Strand. Supposing the automaton 

 to be put in motion by a magnet, which is probable, it will 

 supply us with a comparison very apt for our present pur- 

 pose. Of the magnetic effluvium we know perhaps as Httle 

 as we do of the nervous fluid. But, magnetic attraction 

 being assumed — it signifies nothing from what cause it pro- 

 eeeds — we can trace, or there can be pointed out to us, with 

 perfect clearness and certainty, the mechanism, namely, tlie 

 steel bars, the wheels, the joints, the wires, by which the 

 motion so much admired is communicated to the fingers oi 

 the image ; and to make any obscurity or difficulty, or con- 

 troversy in the doctrine of magnetism, an objection to oui 

 knowledge or our certainty concerning the contrivance, or 

 the marks of contrivance, displayed in the automaton, would 

 be exactly the same thing as it is to make our ignorance— 

 which we acknowledge — of the cause of nervous agency, or 

 even of the substance and structure of the nerves them- 

 selves, a ground of question or suspicion as to the reasoning 

 which we institute concerning the mechanical part of our 

 frame. That an animal is a machine, is a proposition nei- 

 ther correctly true nor wholly false. The distinction which 

 we have been discussing will serve to show how far the 

 comparison which this expression implies holds, and wliere- 

 in it fails. And whether the distinction be thought of im 

 portance or not, it is certainly of importance to remember 

 tLat there is neither truth nor justice in endeavoring to bring 

 a cloud over our understandings, or a distrust into our reason- 

 ings upon this subject, by suggesting that we know nothing 

 of voluntary motion, of irritability, of the principle of life, of 

 sensation, of animal heat, upon all which the animal func- 

 tions depend ; for our ignorance of these parts of the animal 

 frame concerns not at all our knowledge of the mechanical 

 parts of the same frame. I contend, therefore, that there is 

 mechanism in animals ; that this mechanism is as properly 

 Buch as it is in machines made bv art * that this mechanism 



