ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



whole school of occasionalist Cartesians held this view ; 

 the orthodox Leibnitz invented the term " automate 

 spirituel," and applied it to man ; the fervent Christian, 

 Hartley, was one of the chief advocates and best exposi- 

 tors of the doctrine ; while another zealous apologist of 

 Christianity in a sceptical age, and a contemporary of 

 Hartley, Charles Bonnet, the Genevese naturalist, has 

 embodied the doctrine in language of such precision and 

 simplicity, that I will quote the little-known passage of 

 his "Essai de Psychologic" at length : 



" ANOTHEE HYPOTHESIS COXOEEXING THE MECHANISM OF IDEAS. * 



" Philosophers accustomed to judge of things by that which they 

 are in themselves, and not by their relation to received ideas, would 

 not be shocked if they met with the proposition that the soul is a 

 mere spectator of the movements of its body : that the latter per- 

 forms of itself all that series of actions which constitutes life : that 

 it moves of itself: that it is the body alone which reproduces ideas, 

 compares and arranges them ; which forms reasonings, imagines and 

 executes plans of all kinds, etc. This hypothesis, though perhaps 

 of an excessive boldness, nevertheless deserves some consideration. 



" It is not to be denied that Supreme Power could create an au- 

 tomaton which should exactly imitate all the external and internal 

 actions of man. 



" I understand by external actions, all those movements which 

 pass under our eyes; I term internal actions, all the motions 

 which in the natural state cannot be observed because they take 

 place in the interior of the body such as the movements of diges- 

 tion, circulation, sensation, etc. Moreover, I include in this cate- 

 gory the movements which give rise to ideas, whatever be their 

 nature. 



" In the automaton which we are considering everything would 

 be precisely determined. Everything would occur according to the 

 rules of the most admirable mechanism : one state would succeed 



* " Essai de Psychologic," chap, xxvii. 



