188 DESCARTES' DISCOURSE ox METHOD iv 



person, could make him pronounce a sentence ? 

 Yet, if one has anything to say, what is easier 

 than to say it ? We desire the utterance of cer- 

 tain words : we touch the spring of the word- 

 machine, and they are spoken. Just as Descartes' 

 engineer, when he wanted a particular hydraulic 

 machine to play, had only to turn a tap, and what 

 he wished was done. It is because the body is a 

 machine that education is possible. Education is 

 the formation of habits, a superinducing of an 

 artificial organisation upon the natural organisa- 

 tion of the body ; so that acts, which at first 

 required a conscious effort, eventually became un- 

 conscious and mechanical. If the act which 

 primarily requires a distinct consciousness and 

 volition of its details, always needed the same 

 effort, education would be an impossibility. 



According to Descartes, then, all the functions 

 which are common to man and animals are per- 

 formed by the body as a mere mechanism, and he 

 looks upon consciousness as the peculiar distinc- 

 tion of the " chose pensante," of the " rational soul," 

 which in man (and in man only, in Descartes' 

 opinion) is superadded to the body. This rational 

 soul he conceived to be lodged in the pineal gland, 

 as in a sort of central office; and here, by the in- 

 termediation of the animal spirits, it became aware 

 of what was going on in the body, or influenced 

 the operations of the body. Modern physiologist! 

 do not ascribe so exalted a function to the little 



