ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF XATLKE. 



Id 



called the conscious automaton theory, is the central 

 conception in iisychology as a natural science, or, as 

 I have termed it, of the psycho - physical view (tf 

 nature. It was ])repared ^ by earlier thinkers, such as 

 Descartes, and, in a different form, by Spinoza," and Ity 

 Leibniz's doctrine of pre-established harmony.^ It has 

 been strengthened by the physiological theory of reflex 

 action,"* and, independently, by psycho -pliysics in the 

 narrower sense of the word, as founded by AVeljer and 

 Fechner. But the possibilities of the automaton theory 

 were not scientifically tested till towards the end of 

 the nineteenth century. In this country, two thinkers 



' The doctrine of psycho-physical 

 paralleHsiii and its histoi-ical genesis 

 is given l)y Huxley in his address 

 before tlie British Association Meet- 

 ing at Belfast in 1874, "On the 

 Hypothesis that Animals are Auto- 

 mata, and its History," in whicli lie 

 goes back to Descartes and Charles 

 Bonnet. A good account of the 

 theory is also given by Prof. Wra. 

 James in the .'Jth chapter of his 

 ' Principles of I'sychology ' ; and it 

 is fully discussed by Prof. James 

 AVard in his Citibrd lectures, 

 ' Naturalism and Agnosticism,' vol. 

 ii. pt. iii. 



- The passage from Spinoza which 

 is constantly quoted, and, as Prof. 

 Ward says, usually in ignorance of 

 the context, is in ' Kthica,' part ii. 

 prop. 7 : " Ordo et connexio ide- 

 arum idem est ac ordo et connexio 

 rerum." 



'Leibniz, as Huxley {loc. cit.) 

 tells us, also invented the term 

 " automate spirituel " and appplied 

 it to man. 



* Du Bois - Reymond, in his 

 "Kloge" of Johannes Miillei", iias 

 shown that the principle of reflex 

 action dates back to Descartes, 

 wlio also introduced the term re- 



flex. Next in time cauie Willis 

 ('De motu muscular!,' Amsterdam, 

 1682). The subject seems to have 

 been overlooked to such an extent, 

 (1784) got for a 

 credit of having 

 notion of reflex 

 his work had to 



that Prochaska 

 long time the 

 established the 

 action, and even 



be rediscovered by Eduard Weber 

 (1846), after the principle of the 

 transition of a reaction from the 

 afferent to the efferent nerves in 

 the central organs had been prom- 

 inently put forward bv Legallois 

 (1811), Marshall Hall ('1835), and 

 Johannes Miiller (1835). In more 

 recent times, Prof. Pfliiger's '' Laws 

 of Keflex Action," and his and (i. 

 H. Lewes's theory of the jiresence 

 of consciousness in the si)inal cord, 

 liave formed the subject of much 

 discussion and much expeiimental 

 work. A good historical account 

 will be found in the 13th Lei'on 

 of M. Ch. Hichets ' Physiologie 

 des Muscles et dos Nerfs ' (Paris, 

 1882), and a discussion of the whole 

 subject in Prof. Wundt's ' Physi- 

 ologische Psychologic,' ch. xxi., 

 where especially the difference be- 

 tween automatic and reflex move- 

 ment is brought out. 



