IX.] ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 209 



between the external cause of a sensation and the 

 sensation, there is interposed a mode of motion of 

 nervous matter, of which the state of consciousness is 

 no likeness, but a mere symbol, is of the profoundest 

 importance. It is the physiological foundation of the 

 doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and a more 

 or less complete idealism is a necessary consequence 

 of it. 



For of two alternatives one must be true. Either 

 consciousness is the function of a something distinct 

 from the brain, which we call the soul, and a sensa- 

 tion is the mode in which this soul is affected by the 

 motion of a part of the brain ; or there is no soul, and 

 a sensation is something generated by the mode of 

 motion of a part of the brain. In the former case, 

 the phenomena of the senses are purely spiritual 

 affections ; in the latter, they are something manu- 

 factured by the mechanism of the body, and as unlike 

 the causes which set that mechanism in motion, as the 

 sound of a repeater is unlike the pushing of the spring 

 which gives rise to it. 



The nervous system stands between consciousness 

 and the assumed external world, as an interpreter who 

 can talk with his fingers stands between a hidden 

 speaker and a man who is stone deaf and Eealism is 

 equivalent to a belief on the part of the deaf man, 

 that the speaker must also be talking with his fingers. 

 " Les extremes se touchent ;" the shibboleth of materi- 

 alists that " thought is a secretion of the brain," is the 

 Fichtean doctrine that "the phenomenal universe is 

 the creation of the Ego," expressed in other language. 



p 



