234 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. [LECT. 



As Hartley finely says, " We seem to be in the place 

 of God to them ; " and we may justly follow the pre- 

 cedents He sets in nature in our dealings with them. 



But though we may see reason to disagree with 

 Descartes' hypothesis that brutes are unconscious 

 machines, it does not follow that he was wrong in re- 

 garding them as automata. They may be more or 

 less conscious, sensitive, automata ; and the view that 

 they are such conscious machines is that which is 

 implicitly, or explicitly, adopted by most persons. 

 When we speak of the actions of the lower animals 

 being guided by instinct and not by reason, what we 

 really mean is that, though they feel as we do, yet 

 their actions are the results of their physical organisa- 

 tion. We believe, in short, that they are machines, 

 one part of which (the nervous system) not only sets 

 the rest in motion, and co-ordinates its movements in 

 relation with changes in surrounding bodies, but is 

 provided with special apparatus, the function of which 

 is the calling into existence of those states of con- 

 sciousness which are termed sensations, emotions, and 

 ideas. I believe that this generally accepted view is 

 the best expression of the facts at present known. 



It is experimentally demonstrable any one who 

 cares to run a pin into himself may perform a suffi- 

 cient demonstration of the fact that a mode of 

 motion of the nervous system is the immediate ante- 

 cedent of a state of consciousness. All but the 

 adherents of "Occasionalism," or of the doctrine of 

 " Pre-established Harmony " (if any such now exist), 

 must admit that we have as much reason for regarding 



