ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 241 



the rest of us, to pay tlieir toll for living, and suffer 

 what is needful for the general good. As Hartley finely 

 says, " We seem to be in the place of God to them ; " 

 and we may justly follow the precedents He sets in 

 nature in our dealings with them. 



But though we may see reason to disagree with Des- 

 cartes' hypothesis that brutes are unconscious machines, 

 it does not follow that he was wrong in regarding them 

 as automata. They may be more or less conscious, sen- 

 sitive, automata; and the view that they are such con- 

 scious machines is that which is implicitly, or explicitly, 

 adopted by most persons. When we speak of the ac- 

 tions of the lower animals being guided by instinct and 

 not by reason, what we really mean is that, though they 

 feel as we do, yet their actions are the results of their 

 physical organisation. We believe, in short, that they are 

 machines, one part of which (the nervous system) not 

 only sets the rest in motion, and co-ordinates its move- 

 ments in relation with changes in surrounding bodies, 

 but is provided with special apparatus, the function of 

 which is the calling into existence of those states of con- 

 sciousness which are termed sensations, emotions, and 

 ideas. I believe that this generally accepted view is 

 the best expression of the facts at present known. 



It is experimentally demonstrable any one who cares 

 to run a pin into himself may perform a sufficient dem- 

 onstration of the fact that a mode of motion of the 

 nervous system is the immediate antecedent of a state 

 of consciousness. All but the adherents of " Occasion- 



