ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT ANIMALS 

 ARE AUTOMATA, AND ITS HISTORY 



[1874] 



THE first half of the seventeenth century is one of 

 the great epochs of biological science. For though 

 suggestions and indications of the conceptions 

 which took definite shape, at that time, are to be 

 met with in works of earlier date, they are little 

 more than the shadows which coming truth casts 

 forward ; men's knowledge was neither extensive 

 enough, nor exact enough, to show them the solid 

 body of fact which threw these shadows. 



But, in the seventeenth century, the idea that 

 the physical processes of life are capable of being 

 explained in the same way as other physical 

 phenomena, and, therefore, that the living body 

 is a mechanism, was proved to be true for certain 

 classes of vital actions ; and, having thus taken 



