CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WILL 91 



in motion elaborate cerebral reactions which have 

 their basis in the organization of the brain. The 

 automatic mechanism which thus reacts not merely 

 to stimuli arising within the organism, but also to 

 many stimuli from outside, is a mechanism of extreme 

 complexity, delicacy, and plasticity. But I cannot 

 see that these qualities which make possible a great 

 variety of emotions and feelings and acts, following 

 each other in rapid and uninterrupted succession, 

 give any evidence of a freedom of action or of ultra- 

 mechanistic forces. In the period of vigorous growth 

 and increasing powers, it is difficult for people to 

 believe themselves to be essentially automata, for it 

 is not at once obvious that the various increasingly 

 complicated acts and achievements of life are simply 

 expressions of growing complexity in the machinery 

 of the nervous system which thus becomes able to 

 support more and more elaborate reactions. But 

 in the period of declining powers, of failing memory, 

 or of more and more restricted ideas, the skeleton of 

 mechanism becomes more obtrusively apparent, and 

 the atrophy of the brain engine gives the undeniable 

 clew to this simplification in automatism. 



The recognition of the fatalistic and automatic 

 nature of the acts of other people must follow on its 

 detection in one's own life. A scientific fatalistic 

 personal creed must, therefore, powerfully influence 

 the judgments formed on the conduct of other per- 

 sons. The better understanding of the causes of 

 conduct in others must necessarily cultivate in us a 



