224: ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



The Port Royalists adopted the hypothesis that 

 brutes are machines, and are said to have carried its 

 practical applications so far, as to treat domestic animals 

 with neglect, if not with actual cruelty. As late as the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, the problem was dis- 

 cussed very fully and ably by Bouillier, in his " Essai 

 philosophique sur 1'Ame des Betes," while Condillac 

 deals with it in his " Traite des Animaux ; " but since 

 then it has received little attention. Nevertheless, mod- 

 ern research has brought to light a great multitude of 

 facts, which not only show that Descartes' view is defen- 

 sible, but render it far more defensible than it was in his 

 day. 



It must be premised, that it is wholly impossible 

 absolutely to prove the presence or absence of conscious- 

 ness in anything but one's own brain, though, by anal- 

 ogy, we are justified in assuming its existence in other 

 men. Now if, by some accident, a man's spinal cord is 

 divided, his lirnbs are paralysed, so far as his volition 

 is concerned, below the point of injury; and he is in- 

 capable of experiencing all those states of consciousness, 

 which, in his uninjured state, would be excited by irrita- 

 tion of those nerves which come off below the injury. 

 If the spinal cord is divided in the middle of the back, 

 for example, the skin of the feet may be cut, or pinched, 

 or burned, or wetted with vitriol, without any sensation 

 of touch, or of pain, arising in consciousness. So far as 

 the man is concerned, therefore, the part of the central 

 nervous system which lies beyond the injury is cut off 



