ON FREE-WILL, AND MAN'S AUTOMATISM. 123 



existed, and, according to Lange and Nageli, have per- 

 formed all outward bodily actions, have walked, uttered 

 speech, made music, possibly mechanical inventions, and 

 all this without the present accidental adjunct of con- 

 sciousness. He would have been then a perfect walking 

 and moving automaton, seemingly skilful and with a 

 certain method, as he is now essentially all this, only 

 with consciousness superadded. 



* 3. This theory of the essentially mechanical nature 

 of man, it need scarcely be stated, is also materialism of 

 the extremest character. It expels everything from man 

 except matter and its properties. The "dominion in the 

 head and breast," the proud characteristic of man, is 

 explained by the properties of matter, by the greater 

 number and finer organization of the cerebral atoms and 

 fibres. There is evidently, on this view of man, not 

 only no free-will, but there is not even any possible 

 power of controlling or guiding conduct. If every voli- 

 tion, as well as every action, is determined by the phy- 

 sical energies, there is nothing left for the moral man to 

 do. In the reduction of everything in man to physical 

 forces, their interaction and results, the moral man is 

 entirely lost, and the power of self- direction which all 

 moralists and all men, including even the automatonists 

 themselves, admit becomes impossible of explanation. 

 Our guidance by the mental light of consciousness, as by 

 the moral light of conscience, is alike incapable of ex- 

 planation. But as this theory has not received the 

 general sanction even of scientific philosophers ; ancl 

 moreover, even if, as Professor Huxley contends, mole- 

 cular movements and mechanical forces cause our con- 

 scious volitions and cause our conduct, still, as for 

 purposes of science we must accept the conscious symbols 

 which we do feel and know as the only measures of the 



