202 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on 

 any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with 

 men of real power and grasp, who have considered it 

 from a totally different point of view. The parallax 

 of time helps us to the true position of a conception, 

 as the parallax of space helps us to that of a star. And 

 the moral nature loses no less. It is well to turn 

 aside from the fretful stir of the present and to dwell 

 with gratitude and respect upon the services of those 

 "mighty men of old who have gone down to the 

 grave with their weapons of war," but who, while 

 they yet lived, won splendid victories over ignorance. 

 It is well, again, to reflect that the fame of Descartes 

 filled all Europe, and his authority overshadowed it, 

 for a century ; while now, most of those who know 

 his name think of him, either as a person who had 

 some preposterous notions about vortices and was 

 deservedly annihilated by the great Sir Isaac Newton ; 

 or as the apostle of an essentially vicious method of 

 deductive speculation ; and that, nevertheless, neither 

 the chatter of shifting opinion, nor the silence of per- 

 sonal oblivion, has in the slightest degree affected 

 the growth of the great ideas of which he was the 

 instrument and the mouthpiece. 



It is a matter of fact that the greatest physiologist 

 of the eighteenth century, Haller, in treating of the 

 functions of nerve, does little more than reproduce 

 and enlarge upon the ideas of Descartes. It is a 

 matter of fact that David Hartley, in his remarkable 

 work the "Essay on Man/' expressly, though still 

 insufficiently, acknowledges the resemblance of his 



