216 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



things is, or can be, transmitted to the mind by the 

 sensory organs ; but that, between the external cause of 

 a sensation and the sensation, there is interposed a mode 

 of motion of nervous matter, of which the state of con- 

 sciousness is no likeness, but a mere symbol, is of the 

 profoundest importance. It is the physiological founda- 

 tion of the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and 

 a more or less complete idealism is a necessary conse- 

 quence of it. 



For of two alternatives one must be true. Either 

 consciousness is the function of a something distinct 

 from the brain, which, we call the soul, and a sensation 

 is the mode in which this soul is affected by the motion 

 of a part of the brain ; or there is no soul, and a sensa- 

 tion is something generated by the mode of motion of 

 a part of the brain. In the former case, the phenomena 

 of the senses are purely spiritual affections; in the lat- 

 ttr, they are something manufactured by the mechanism 

 of the body, and as unlike the causes which set that 

 mechanism in motion, as the sound of a repeater is un- 

 like the pushing of the spring whicli gives rise to it. 



The nervous system stands between consciousness 

 and the assumed external world, as an interpreter who 

 can talk with his fingers stands between a hidden speaker 

 and a man who is stone deaf and Realism is equiva- 

 lent to a belief on the part of the deaf man, that the 

 speaker must also be talking with his fingers. " Les 

 extremes se touchent ; " the shibboleth of materialists 

 4 that " thought is a secretion of the brain," is the Fich- 



