138 PSYCHOLOGY. 



that for years to come we shall have to infer what happens 

 in the brain either from our feelings or from motor eflects 

 which we observe. The organ will be for us a sort of vat 

 in which feelings and motions somehow go on stewing 

 together, and in which innumerable things happen of which 

 we catch but the statistical result. Why, under these cir- 

 cumstances, we should be asked to forswear the language 

 of our childhood I cannot well imagine, especially as it is 

 perfecth' compatible with the language of physiology. The 

 feelings can produce nothing absolutely new, they can only 

 reinforce and inhibit reflex currents which already exist, 

 and the original organization of these by pln^siological 

 forces must always be the ground-work of the psycho- 

 logical scheme. 



My conclusion is that to urge the automaton-theory 

 upon us, as it is now urged, on purely a priori and quasi- 

 metaphysical grounds, is an umvarrantable impertinence in 

 the present state of psychology. 



BEASONS AGAINST THE THEORY. 



But there are much more positive reasons than this why 

 we ought to continue to talk in psychology as if conscious- 

 ness had causal efficacy. The particulars of the distribu- 

 tion of consciousness, so far as we know them, point to its 

 being efficacious. Let us trace some of them. 



It is very generally admitted, though the point would 

 be hard to prove, that consciousness grows the more com- 

 plex and intense the higher we rise in the animal kingdom. 

 That of a man must exceed that of an oyster. From this 

 point of view it seems an organ, superadded to the other 

 organs which maintain the animal in the struggle for exist- 

 ence ; and the presumption of course is that it helps him 

 in some way in the struggle, just as they do. But it 

 cannot help him without being in some way efficacious and 

 influencing the course of his bodily history. If now it 

 could be shown in what way consciousness might help him, 

 and if, moreover, the defects of his other organs (where 

 consciousness is most developed) are such as to make them 

 need just the kind of help that consciousness would bring 

 provided it were efficacious ; why, then the plausible infer- 



