CONSCIOUSNESS. 177 



I. The anthropistic theory of consciousness. — It is 

 peculiar to roan. To Descartes we must trace the 

 widespread notion that consciousness and thought are 

 man's exclusive prerogative, and that he alone is 

 blessed with an " immortal soul." This famous 

 French philosopher and mathematician (educated in 

 a Jesuit College) established a rigid partition between 

 the psychic activity of man and that of the brute. 

 In his opinion the human soul, a thinking, immaterial 

 being, is completely distinct from the body, which 

 is extended and material. Yet it is united to the 

 body at a certain point in the brain (the glandula 

 pinealis) for the purpose of receiving impressions from 

 the outer world and effecting muscular movements. 

 The animals, not being endowed with thought, have 

 no soul : they are mere automata, or cleverly-con- 

 structed machines, whose sensations, presentations, 

 and volitions are purely mechanical, and take place 

 according to the ordinary laws of physics. Hence 

 Descartes was a dualist in human psychology, and a 

 monist in the psychology of the brute. This open 

 contradiction in so clear and acute a thinker is very 

 striking ; in explaining it, it is not unnatural to 

 suppose that he concealed his real opinion, and left 

 the discovery of it to independent scholars. As a 

 pupil of the Jesuits, Descartes had been taught to 

 deny the truth in the face of his better insight ; and 

 perhaps he dreaded the power and the fires of the 

 Church. Besides, his sceptical principle, that every 

 sincere effort to attain the truth must start with a 

 doubt of the traditional dogma, had already drawn 

 upon him fanatical accusations of scepticism and 

 atheism. The great influence which Descartes had 

 on subsequent philosophy was very remarkable, and 



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