BOOK IV. THE FUNDAMENTAL INSTINCTS 

 IN THEIR RELATION TO HUMAN 

 DEVELOPMENT 



CHAPTER XI 



THE ARTS AND RELIGION 



THE following discussion is based on the view, 

 developed in preceding chapters, that all animals, 

 including man, are literally automata; that is, 

 machines whose conduct exactly reflects their physi- 

 cal organization. This view does not overlook the 

 difficulty of accounting for animal evolution on the 

 ground of existing scientific knowledge; but it 

 assumes that, given the developed machine, the 

 hypothesis of automatism, in the most complete 

 form, accounts for the facts of animal life better 

 than any other. And it not only endeavors to 

 account for the most obvious and grossly mechanical 

 functions of the organism, such as the circulation of 

 the blood, the mode of locomotion, or the formation 

 of images on the retina, but also sees in organiza- 

 tion the full cause of conduct in its most varied 

 phases, and the basis of all kinds of mental processes 

 and emotional and ethical reactions. Human con- 

 duct on this hypothesis is the extremely intimate 

 and elaborate train of nervous reactions that ex- 



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