V ANIMAL AUTOMATISM 211 



The nervous system stands between conscious- 

 ness and the assumed external world, as an 

 interpreter who can talk with his fingers stands 

 between a hidden speaker and a man who is stone 

 deaf and Realism is equivalent to a belief on the 

 part of the deaf man, that the speaker must also 

 be talking with his fingers. " Les extremes se 

 touchent ; " the shibboleth of materialists that 

 "thought is a secretion of the brain," is the 

 Fichtean doctrine that "the phenomenal uni- 

 verse is the creation of the Ego," expressed in 

 other language. 



IV. The motion of the matter of a sensory nerve 

 may be transmitted through the brain to 

 motor nerves, and thereby give rise to con- 

 traction of the muscles to ivhich these motor 

 nerves are distributed ; and this rejlcction 

 of motion from a sensory into a motor 

 nerve may take place, without volition, or 

 even contrary to it. 



In stating these important truths, Descartes 

 defined that which we now term " reflex action." 

 Indeed he almost uses the term itself, as he talks 

 of the " animal spirits " as " reflechis," 1 from the 

 sensory into the motor nerves. And that this use 

 of the word " reflected " was no mere accident, but 

 that the importance and appropriateness of the 



1 Passions dc I'Ame, Art. xxxvi. 



p 2 



