246 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM v 



And if this personal disclaimer should not be 

 enough, let me further point out that a great 

 many persons whose acuteness and learning will 

 not be contested, and whose Christian piety, and, 

 in some cases, strict orthodoxy, are above siispicion, 

 have held more or less definitely the view that 

 man is a conscious automaton. 



It is held, for example, in substance, by the 

 whole school of predestinarian theologians, typified 

 by St. Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards 

 the great work of the latter on the will showing 

 in this, as in other cases, that the growth of 

 physical science has introduced no new difficulties 

 of principle into theological problems, but has 

 merely given visible body, as it were, to those 

 already existed. 



Among philosophers, the pious Geulincx and 

 the whole school of occasionalist Cartesians held 

 this view; the orthodox Leibnitz invented the 

 term " automate spirituel," and applied it to man ; 

 the fervent Christian, Hartley, was one of the 

 chief advocates and best expositors of the doctrine ; 

 while another zealous apologist of Christianity in 

 a sceptical age, and a contemporary of Hartley, 

 Charles Bonnet, the Genevese naturalist, has 

 embodied the doctrine in language of such pre- 

 cision and simplicity, that I will quote the little- 

 known passage of his "Essai do Psychologic " at 

 length : 



