24:6 ASTIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



no farther. Unfortunately, past experience debars me 

 from entertaining any such hope, even if 



u that drum's discordant sound 



Parading round and round and round/' 



were not, at present, as audible to me, as it was to the 

 mild poet who ventured to express his hatred of drums 

 in general, in that well-known couplet. 



It will be said, that I mean that the conclusions de- 

 duced from the study of the brutes are applicable to 

 man, and that the logical consequences of such applica- 

 tion are fatalism, materialism, and atheism whereupon 

 the drums will beat the pas de charge. 



One does not do battle with drummers; but I ven- 

 ture to offer a few remarks for the calm consideration of 

 thoughtful persons, untrammelled by foregone conclu- 

 sions, unpledged to shore-up tottering dogmas, and anx- 

 ious only to know the true bearings of the case. 



It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the 

 argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally 

 good of men ; and, therefore, that all states of conscious- 

 ness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by mo- 

 lecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me 

 that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any 

 state of consciousness is the cause of change in the mo- 

 tion of the matter of the organism. If these positions 

 are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are 

 simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes 

 which take place automatically in the organism ; and 

 that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call 



