250 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 



another state, one operation would lead to another operation, ac- 

 cording to invariable laws ; motion would become alternately cause 

 and effect, effect and cause ; reaction would answer to action, and 

 reproduction to production. 



" Constructed with definite relations to the activity of the beings 

 ' which compose the world, the automaton would receive impressions 

 from it, and, in faithful correspondence thereto, it would execute a 

 corresponding series of motions. 



" Indifferent towards any determination, it would yield equally 

 to all, if the first impressions did not, so to speak, wind up the ma- 

 chine and decide its operations and its course. 



u The series of movements which this automaton could execute 

 would distinguish it from all others formed on the same model, 

 but which, not having been placed in similar circumstances, would 

 not have experienced the same impressions, or would not have ex- 

 perienced them in the same order. 



" The senses of the automaton, set in motion by the objects pre- 

 sented to it, would communicate their motion to the brain, the 

 chief motor apparatus of the machine. This would put in action 

 the muscles of the hands and feet, in virtue of their secret connec- 

 tion with the senses. These muscles, alternately contracted and 

 dilated, would approximate or remove the automaton from the ob- 

 jects, in the relation which they would bear to the conservation or 

 the destruction of the machine. 



u The motions of perception and sensation which the objects 

 would have impressed on the brain, would be preserved in it by the 

 energy of its mechanism. They would become more vivid accord- 

 ing to the actual condition of the automaton, considered in itself 

 and relatively to the objects. 



"Words being only the motions impressed on the organ of hear- 

 ing and that of voice, the diversity of these movements, their com- 

 bination, the order in which they would succeed one another, would 

 represent judgments, reasoning, and all the operations of the mind. 



" A close correspondence between the organs of the senses, either 

 by the opening into one another of their nervous ramifications, or 

 by interposed springs (ressorts), would establish such a connection in 

 their working, that, on the occasion of the movements impressed 

 on one of these organs, other movements would be excited, or would 

 become more vivid in some of the other senses. 



u Give the automaton a soul which contemplates its movements, 



