122 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



accident, fortunate or otherwise, appeared to watch over 

 and register the whole series of physical processes, though 

 these would have gone on just as well in its absence. In 

 this case, thought or consciousness would not consume 

 any of the stock of energy ; the law of conservation of 

 energy would not be threatened in its generality ; and 

 man would be a true automaton, with consciousness 

 added , as a spectator, but not as a director of the 

 machinery. 



The theory of the man-machine which thus emerges, 

 culminates in Professor Huxley's comparison of man to 

 a clock very cunningly constructed, whose face, with the 

 information upon it, corresponds to consciousness, which 

 presents us with thoughts, emotions, volitions ; and just 

 as we know that the hour and minute hand of the clock, 

 which mark the time, are obedient to and caused by 

 hidden forces and inner movements, whose action they 

 serve to measure and visibly symbolize, so our conscious- 

 ness but symbolizes and expresses the mysterious springs 

 and inner movements of the machinery of the brain and 

 nerves, by which, in like manner, states of consciousness 

 are finally caused. Every mental state of which we are 

 conscious is thus at' once the symbol and product of a 

 particular position of the cerebral atoms, of which we 

 are unconscious. The former, according to Professor 

 Huxley, is the effect of the latter, not merely as a " bye- 

 product," but a true product in the scientific sense of the 

 word, because it is an effect which follows from the other 

 as an invariable antecedent. It is an effect, but on the 

 theory of automatism it can scarcely be considered the 

 proper primary effect ; for consciousness might conceiv- 

 ably have been absent altogether (as it now occasionally 

 is in our strictly automatic states and actions), and yet 

 the man-machine might have existed. He might have 



