i874 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM 443 



The paper on Animal Automatism is in effect an en- 

 largement of a short paper read before the Metaphysical 

 Society in 1871, under the title of " Has a Frog a Soul? " 

 It begins with a vindication of Descartes as a great physi- 

 ologist, doing for the physiology of motion and sensation 

 that which Harvey had done for the circulation of the blood. 

 A series of propositions which constitute the foundation and 

 essence of the modern physiology of the nervous system, are 

 fully expressed and illustrated in the writings of Descartes. 

 Modern physiological research, which has shown that many 

 apparently purposive acts are performed by animals, and 

 even by men, deprived of consciousness, and therefore of 

 volition, is at least compatible with the theory of automatism 

 in animals, although the doctrine of continuity forbids the 

 belief that " such complex phenomena as those of conscious- 

 ness first make their appearance in man." And if the voli- 

 tions of animals do not enter into the chain of causation 

 of their actions at all, the fact lays at rest the question, 

 " How is it possible to imagine that volition, which is a 

 state of consciousness, and, as such, has not the slightest 

 community of nature with matter in motion, can act upon 

 the moving matter of which the body is composed, as it is 

 assumed to do in voluntary acts?" 



As for man, the argumentation, if sound, holds equally 

 good. States of consciousness are immediately caused by 

 molecular changes of the brain-substance, and our mental 

 conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the 

 changes which take place automatically in the organism. 



As for the bugbear of the " logical consequences " of this 

 conviction, " I may be permitted to remark (he says), that 

 logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the 

 beacons of wise men." And if St. Augustine, Calvin, and 

 Jonathan Edwards have held in substance the view that 

 men are conscious automata, to hold this view does not 

 constitute a man a fatalist, a materialist, nor an atheist. 

 And he takes occasion once more to declare that he ranks 

 among none of these philosophers. 



Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to 

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



