ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



edge of Descartes, would they not Lave formed an apt 

 commentary upon that remarkable passage in the " Traite 

 de 1'Homme," which I have quoted elsewhere,* but 

 which is worth repetition? 



"All the functions which I have attributed to this machine (the 

 body), as the digestion of food, the pulsation of the heart and of the 

 arteries ; the nutrition and the growth of the limbs ; respiration, 

 wakefulness, and sleep; the reception of light, sounds, odours, fla- 

 vours, heat, and such like qualities, in the organs of the external 

 senses ; the impression of the ideas of these in the organ of com- 

 mon sensation and in the imagination ; the retention or the impres- 

 sion of these ideas on the memory ; the internal movements of the 

 appetites and the passions ; and lastly the external movements of all 

 the limbs, which follow so aptly, as well the action of the objects 

 which are presented to the senses, as the impressions which meet in 

 the memory, that they imitate as nearly as possible those of a real 

 man ; I desire, I say, that you should consider that these functions 

 in the machine naturally proceed from the mere arrangement of its 

 organs, neither more nor less than do the movements of a clock, or 

 other automaton, from that of its weights and its wheels ; so that, 

 so far as these are concerned, it is not necessary to conceive any 

 other vegetative or sensitive soul, nor any other principle of motion 

 or of life, than the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire which 

 burns continually in the heart, and which is no wise essentially dif- 

 ferent from all the fires which exist in inanimate bodies." 



And would Descartes not have been justified in asking 

 why we need deny that animals are machines, when 

 men, in a state of unconsciousness, perform, mechanic- 

 ally, actions as complicated and as seemingly rational as 

 those of any animals? 



But though I do not think that Descartes' hypothesis 

 can be positively refuted, I am not disposed to accept 

 it. The doctrine of continuity is too well established 



* " Lay Sermons, Essays and Reviews," p. 355. 

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