Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 225 



says Despine, 1 'admired this automatic science, when seeing a 

 dog follow his master's carriage, leaping in front of the horse, 

 passing between the wheels, while they are revolving at every rate 

 of speed ; and all this without ever being touched either by the 

 wheels or by the horse's feet What mathematical precision 

 there must be in the action of the numerous muscles which 

 concur to execute all these movements ! It all occurs without 

 the volition of the animal, nor does he know how he performs it 

 In man this automatic science strikes us as more wonderful still. 

 Instrumentalists whose cerebellum is imperfect never can per- 

 form a piece of music as they think it ought to be performed. 

 Some highly intelligent men are very awkward, while other men 

 of very moderate intelligence are possessed of very remarkable 

 dexterity ; in point of address some inferior races may equal 

 superior ones. To be a good horseman, a good juggler, a good 

 rope-dancer, a good shot, the commonest grade of intelligence 

 suffices ; but there is need of very perfect automatic organs. It 

 is not the shape of the hand that gives dexterity ; some hands 

 that are very well formed are yet very unskilful, while some ill- 

 shaped hands perform prodigies of dexterity. The hand and the 

 fingers are only the instrument that operates.' 



To all these facts, which appear to denote an unconscious 

 intelligence seated in the organism, and which we have referred 

 to distinct nerve-centres, we might add others no less curious; 

 such as the tendency by which the living thing attains its typical 

 form, or, in case of lesions, restores and completes it. Some 

 physiologists, Burdach for instance, see in this an unconscious 

 instinct of individual conservation ; but most authors simply state 

 these facts without explanation. We will not insist upon them, 

 so that we may the sooner arrive at the unconscious operations 

 of the brain. 



4. Automatism was long considered as appertaining exclusively 

 to the spinal cord and to the secondary nerve-centres. In 

 England, it has been chiefly the researches of Carpenter and Lay- 

 cock which have proved that the brain also possesses an auto- 

 matic activity of its own, which they have called ' unconscious 



1 Psychologic Naturelle, vol. i. p. 485. 



