232 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. [LECT. 



apt commentary upon that remarkable passage in the 

 "Traite* de THomme," which I have quoted elsewhere, 1 

 but which is worth repetition ? 



" All the functions which I have attributed to this machine 

 (the body), as the digestion of food, the pulsation of the heart 

 and of the arteries ; the nutrition and the growth of the limbs ; 

 respiration, wakefulness, and sleep ; the reception of light, sounds, 

 odours, flavours, heat, and such like qualities, in the organs of 

 the external senses ; the impression of the ideas of these in the 

 organ of common sensation and in the imagination ; the retention 

 or the impression of. these ideas on the memory : the internal 

 movements of the appetites and the passions j and lastly the ex- 

 ternal movements of all the limbs, which follow so aptly, as well 

 the action of the objects which are presented to the senses, as the 

 impressions which meet in the memory, that they imitate as 

 nearly as possible those of a real man ; I desire, I say, that you 

 should consider that these functions in the machine naturally 

 proceed from the mere arrangement of its organs, neither more 

 nor less than do the movements of a clock, or other automaton, 

 from that of its weights and its wheels ; so that, so far as these are 

 concerned, it is not necessary to conceive any other vegetative or 

 sensitive soul, nor any other principle of motion or of life, than 

 the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire which burns con- 

 tinually in the heart, and which is no wise essentially different 

 from all the fires which exist in inanimate bodies." 



And would Descartes not have been justified in asking 

 why we need deny that animals are machines, when 

 men, in a state of unconsciousness, perform, mechani- 

 cally, actions as complicated and as seemingly rational 

 as those of any animals ? 



But though I do not think that Descartes' 

 hypothesis can be positively refuted, I am not dis- 

 posed to accept it. The doctrine of continuity is too 

 well established for it to be permissible to me to 



1 " Lay Sermons, Essays and Reviews," p. 355. 



