ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 209 



there is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing 

 up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it 

 over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, 

 who have considered it from a totally different .point 

 of view. The parallax of time helps us to the true posi- 

 tion of a conception, as the parallax of space helps us 

 to that of a star. And the moral nature loses no less. It 

 is well to turn aside from the fretful stir of the present 

 and to dwell with gratitude and respect upon the 

 services of those " mighty men of old who have gone 

 down to the grave with their weapons of war," but who, 

 while they yet lived, won splendid victories over igno- 

 rance. It is well, again, to reflect that the fame of Des- 

 cartes filled all Europe, and his authority overshadowed 

 it, for a century ; while now, most of those who know 

 his name think of him, either as a person who had some 

 preposterous notions about vortices and was deservedly 

 annihilated by the great Sir Isaac Newton; or as the 

 apostle of an essentially vicious method of deductive 

 speculation ; and that, nevertheless, neither the chatter 

 of shifting opinion, nor the silence of personal oblivion, 

 has in the slightest degree affected the growth of the 

 great ideas of which he was the instrument and the 

 mouthpiece. 



It is a matter of fact that the greatest physiologist 

 of the eighteenth century, Haller, in treating of the 

 functions of nerve, does little more than reproduce and 

 enlarge upon the ideas of Descartes. It is a matter of 

 fact that David Hartley, in his remarkable work the 



