24:8 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



istic, materialistic, or atheistic philosophers. Not among 

 fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a 

 logical, and not a physical foundation ; not among ma- 

 terialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the 

 existence of matter if there is no mind in which to pic- 

 ture that existence; not among atheists, for the prob- 

 lem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which 

 seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor 

 powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had 

 occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers 

 who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God 

 would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the 

 still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to 

 prove that there is no God. 



And if this personal disclaimer should not be enough, 

 let me further point out that a great many persons whose 

 acuteness and learning will not be contested, and whose 

 Christian piety, and, in some cases, strict orthodoxy, are 

 above suspicion, have held more or less definitely the 

 view that man is a conscious automaton. 



It is held, for example, in substance, by the whole 

 school of predestinarian theologians, typified by St. Au- 

 gustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards the great work 

 of the latter on the will showing in this, as in other 

 cases, that the growth of physical science has introduced 

 no new difficulties of principle into theological problems, 

 but has merely given visible body, as it were, to those 

 which already existed. 



Among philosophers, the pious Geulincx and the 



