78 Notices of Scientific Works. [Jan., 



the physical system and to the vital organization. The same mode 

 of reasoning is applied as to the facts of organic life, and an analogous 

 conclusion is the result. As the phenomena of animal and vegetable 

 life cannot be referred to the operation of Natural Selection, or of any 

 unintelligent agency whatever, so Mr. Murphy maintains that in all 

 mental intelligence there is an element not derived from habit, and 

 not resolvable into any unintelligent force ; and is hence at issue with 

 the psychological school represented in this country by Mill, Bain, 

 and H. Spencer. In other words, " life, intelligence, and the moral 

 sense is each incapable of being resolved into anything lower than 

 itself." We cannot follow Mr. Murphy over the oft-trodden ground 

 of the existence or non-existence of Innate Ideas — which he beheves 

 to be the inherited experience of the race, the reality of our belief 

 in an external world, the origin of our conceptions of time and space, 

 and other cognate speculations, on some of which he contrives to 

 throw new light ; but we wish rather to comment on one portion of 

 his scheme which we take to be erroneous. Mr. Murphy points out 

 clearly the difference between conscious and unconscious Sensation, 

 and between conscious and unconscious Thought, the greater part of 

 our thought being unattended by consciousness ; but he often con- 

 founds, as we think, between conscious and unconscious Volition. 

 Now we would maintain that nothing in our mental constitution is 

 clearer than that the Will is often, and indeed generally, exercised 

 without any consciousness of its action. The movements of the 

 limbs in walking we presume Mr. Murphy would call, and we think 

 erroneously, consensual action, the result of habit. The motion of 

 the heart, of the eyelids, of the chest in breathing, we hold to be 

 truly either consensual or reflex ; and the test we would apply is 

 that they cannot be arrested, or only to a very inconsiderable extent, 

 by the action of the Will. In walldng, on the contrary, we can stop 

 at any moment we please ; and whatever can be arrested by the Will 

 must have been set in -motion by the Will. The view has been held 

 that in the motion of the limbs in walking, a certain storage, as it 

 were, of voluntary action, is set at work at the commencement, which 

 is continually flowing forth at every step without any fresh volition. 

 But this idea, we think, will not bear a careful scrutiny. Take the 

 instance of the slight inclination of the body to one side necessary 

 in turning a corner ; this cannot be done without the exercise of the 

 Will, and yet we are perfectly unconscious that any such motion is 

 performed. Or we may illustrate our argument by the familiar 

 example of a flight of steps, say twenty, which we are accustomed 

 daily to descend, and which has been shortened by one step at the 

 bottom of the flight. We all know the unpleasant jerk given to 

 the body by the foot coming into contact with the ground with 

 greater force than was expected. We cannot suppose that an amount 

 of voluntary energy was stored up when we commenced the descent 



