A UTOMA TON- THEOB T. 143 



through an open drawbridge as cheerfully as to any other 

 destination. 



A brain with part of it scooped out is "vdrtually a new 

 machine, and during the first daj^s after the operation 

 functions in a thoroughly abnormal manner. As a matter 

 of fact, however, its performances become from day to day 

 more normal, until at last a practised eye may be needed 

 to suspect anything wrong. Some of the restoration is un- 

 doubtedly due to ' inhibitions ' passing away. But if the 

 consciousness which goes with the rest of the brain, be there 

 not only in order to take cognizance of each functional 

 error, but also to exert an efficient pressure to check it if it 

 be a sin of commission, and to lend a strengthening hand 

 if it be a weakness or sin of omission, — nothing seems 

 more natural than that the remaining parts, assisted in 

 this way, should by ^drtue of the principle of habit grow 

 back to the old teleological modes of exercise for which 

 they were at first incapacitated. Nothing, on the contrary, 

 seems at first sight more unnatural than that they should 

 vicariously take up the duties of a part now lost without 

 those duties as such exerting any persuasive or coercive 

 force. At the end of Chapter XXVI I shall return to this 

 again. 



There is yet another set of facts which seem explicable 

 on the supposition that consciousness has causal efficacy. 

 It is a ivell-knoivn fact that pleasures are generally asso- 

 ciated ivith beneficial, pains loith detrimental, experiences. 

 All the fundamental vital processes illustrate this law. 

 Starvation, suffocation, privation of food, drink and sleep, 

 work when exhausted, burns, wounds, inflammation, the 

 effects of poison, are as disagreeable as filling the hungry 

 stomach, enjoying rest and sleep after fatigue, exercise after 

 rest, and a sound skin and unbroken bones at all times, are 

 pleasant. Mr. Spencer and others have suggested that 

 these coincidences are due, not to any pre-established 

 harmony, but to the mere action of natural selection which 

 would certainly kill off in the long-run any breed of crea- 

 tures to whom the fundamentally noxious experience seemed 

 enjoyable. An animal that should take pleasure in a feel- 



