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see approaching towards them a Neptune, who threatens them with his trident ; or if 

 they pass in another direction they cause some sea-monster to dart out who vomits water 

 into their faces ; or like contrivances, according to the fancy of the engineers who made 

 them. And lastly, when the rational soul I'dme raisonnable is lodged in this 

 machine, it will have its principal seat in the brain, and will take the place of the 

 engineer or ' fountaiiieer,' who ought to be in that part of the works or reservoir with 

 which all the various tubes are connected, when he wishes to quicken or to slacken, or in 

 any way to alter their movements." (Traite de VHomme, Victor Cousin's ed. 1824, 

 pp. 347-8.) 



" The final summary is as follows (p. 427) : I desire you to consider 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 sense and in the imagination ; 

 the retention, or the impression, of these ideas on the memory ; the internal movements 

 of the appetites and the passions ; and lastly, the external 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 

 this 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 wheels ; so that so far as these are concerned, it is unnecessary to conceive in it any 

 soul whether vegetative or sensitive or any other principle of motion, or of life, than 

 its blood and its spirits agitated by the heat of the fire which burns continually in its 

 heart, and which is in no wise essentially different in nature from all the fires which are 

 met with in inanimate bodies " (p. 428). 



In his remarkable treatise On the Passions of the Mind (Les 

 passions de I'dme) composed for his patroness and friend the Princess 

 Elizabeth, niece of Charles I., in 1646, but not published until 1649, 

 we come across one of the most fundamental experiments, which 

 marks the early beginning of the history of what we now know as 

 reflex action. In Article XIII., when dealing with the question as 

 to how the brain excited by external objects affects the organs of 

 sense, he says : "If some one aims a blow at the eyes, even though 

 we know that he is a friend, and even if he does it in a joke, and 

 without doing one any harm, we at once even against our will close 

 our eyes. The action of heat on the skin similarly affects the skin 

 nerves, which being set in motion pull upon the parts of the brain 

 whence they take origin, and thus open up the orifices of certain 

 pores on the internal surface of the brain. Through these pores the 

 animal spirits flow from the ventricles and thus pass into the nerves 

 and muscles, which carry out movements in the machine exactly like 

 those to which we ourselves are incited when our senses are affected 

 in the same way." 



As to the working of the machine : 



"It is the more lively, strong, and subtle parts of the blood which reach the 

 ventricles of the brain, and the arteries which carry them are those that pass in a nearly 



