IX.] ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 199 



IX. 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ANIMALS AEE 

 AUTOMATA, AND ITS HISTOKY. 



THE first half of the seventeenth century is one of the 

 great epochs of biological science. For though sug- 

 gestions and indications of the conceptions which 

 took definite shape, at that time, are to be met with 

 in works of earlier date, they are little more than the 

 shadows which coming truth casts forward ; men's 

 knowledge was neither extensive enough, nor exact 

 enough, to show them the solid body of fact which 

 threw these shadows. 



But, in the seventeenth century, the idea that the 

 physical processes of life are capable of being ex- 

 plained in the same way as other physical phenomena, 

 and, therefore, that the living body is a mechanism, 

 was proved to be true for certain classes of vital 

 actions ; and, having thus taken firm root in irrefrag- 

 able fact, this conception has not only successfully 

 repelled every assault which has been made upon it, 

 but has steadily grown in force and extent of ap- 

 plication, until it is now the expressed or implied 

 fundamental proposition of the whole doctrine of 

 scientific Physiology. 



