IX.] ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 239 



mild poet who ventured to express his hatred of drums 

 in general, in that well-known couplet. 



It will be said, that I mean that the conclusions 

 deduced from the study of the brutes are applicable 

 to man, and that the logical consequences of such 

 application are fatalism, materialism, and atheism 

 whereupon the drums will beat the pas de charge. 



One does not do battle with drummers; but I 

 venture to offer a few remarks for the calm considera- 

 tion of thoughtful persons, untrammelled by foregone 

 conclusions, unpledged to shore-up tottering dogmas, 

 and anxious only to know the true bearings of the 

 case. 



It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, 

 the argumentation which applies to brutes holds 

 equally good of men ; and, therefore, that all states 

 of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately 

 caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. 

 It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no 

 proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of 

 change in the motion of the matter of the organism. 

 If these positions are well based, it follows that our 

 mental conditions are simply the symbols in conscious- 

 ness of the changes which take place automatically in 

 the organism ; and that, to take an extreme illustration, 

 the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a 

 voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the 

 brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We 

 are conscious automata, endowed with free will in the 

 only intelligible sense of that much-abused term 

 inasmuch as in many respects we are able to do as we 



