ON FREE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 121 



discoverable that cannot be expressed in mechanical 

 terms. Man is a machine in which there is a quantity 

 of disposable energy locked up chemical, mechanical, 

 electrical, thermal energy ,^-which may be transmuted, 

 but which seeks a vent either in muscular movement, in 

 locomotive effort, in the play of consciousness, or in the 

 production of the severer effort of thought. To produce 

 these conscious states, energy is expended, the inner fire 

 and fuel is burnt as well as in physical exertion. There 

 is a certain quantity of- the physical energy required for 

 all mental work, which may express itself in a drama, a 

 philosophical system, a scientific discovery, as well as in 

 the construction of a railway tunnel. In all cases alike 

 energy is merely transformed, and the work done may 

 be conceivably reduced to a common measure in foot- 

 pounds. An hour's labour with the brain, an hour's 

 muscular exertion may be conceivably compared together, 

 even though the products be so different ; in either case 

 it is the same stock of energy that is drawn upon, and 

 this may be drafted, in the same individual, now into the 

 service of the brain, and now directed to muscular effort. 

 It is true that the energy which passes into conscious 

 states or permanent mental products addressed to con- 

 sciousness, is no longer available for further use, nor can 

 any of it be re transformed in any case into the original 

 physical factors; a fact which possibly constitutes an 

 exception to the generality of the law of the transformation 

 and conservation of energy. Or possibly, as an eminent 

 physicist asserts, consciousness is not the proper or 

 primary product of the physical energies in the man- 

 machine, which must always remain physico-chemical. 

 Possibly consciousness is only, as Professor Tyndall has 

 termed it, an accidental " bye-product " something over 

 and above the full and fair physical result, which by an 



