The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 141 
clockwork. Here, again, we meet with an echo of Hobbes, 
who opens his work on the commonwealth with these 
words :— 
“Nature, the art whereby God hath made and governs 
the world, is by the art of man, as in many other things, in 
this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. 
For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning where- 
of is in the principal part within; why may we not say. 
that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs 
and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For 
what is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many 
strings ; and the joints but so many wheels giving motion 
to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer ?”’ 
“* Now this theory of conscious automatism is not merely 
a legitimate outcome of the theory that nervous changes 
are the causes of mental changes, but it is logically the only 
possible outcome. Nor do I see any way in which this 
theory can be fought on grounds of physiology.” 
In passing, I may say the theory that living beings are 
conscious machines, can be fought just as much and just as 
little as the theory that machines are unconscious living 
beings; everything that goes to prove either of these 
propositions goes just as well to prove the other also. But 
I have perhaps already said as much as is necessary on this 
head; the main point with which I am concerned is the 
fact that Professor Huxley was trying to expel conscious- 
ness and sentience from any causative action in the working 
of the universe. In the following month appeared the late 
Professor Clifford’s hardly less outspoken article, ‘‘ Body 
and Mind,” to the same effect, also in the Fortnightly 
Review, then edited by Mr. John Morley. Perhaps this 
view attained its frankest expression in an article by the 
late Mr. Spalding, which appeared in Nature, August 2, 
1877 ; the following extracts will show that Mr. Spalding 
must be credited with not playing fast and loose with his 
own conclusions, and knew both how to think a thing out to 
