552 General Notes, 
fully, but state in brief what the two principal reasons for this belief 
. The first is that, according to our experience, animals which 
meet with conditions injurious to life which do not cause them pain 
speedily succumb and perish. It is incredible that animals not 
conscious of hunger, thirst, and changes of temperature should not 
speedily die. Animals not conscious of fear of more powerful ene- 
mies must be destroyed. The second reason for this opinion is, that 
all designed acts whose history we can trace are the result of edu- 
cation. This means, conscious stimuli strong enough to hold the 
attention and the repetition of movements appropriate to the stimu- 
they pursue with such unvarying precision. But most—perhaps 
all—animals have not, in so doing, abnegated consciousness. They 
generally possess enough to enable them to act intelligently in the 
resence of new occasions and to acquire new. habits and add to 
their stock of automatic capacities. This may be better understood 
by reflecting on the long ages of geologic time during which they 
have had the opportunity for such education. 
I add here that it is highly probable that the movements thus 
inaugurated and perpetuated have been made the conditions of the 
environment, the active factor in animal evolution, since it is prob- 
ably due to such action that the organography of animals has been 
determined. This is the probable source of the origin of those vari- 
ations on which natural selection acts. And the view that organie 
evolution is due to the consciousness at the back of automatism has 
been called the doctrine of Archzsthetism.' 
From this digression I return to the question of the nature of the 
act of will. ag 
The animal organism is a machine for the metamorphosis © 
energy ; and the evidence is clear that this process is perform 
strict accordance with the law of the conservation of energy. 
in 
The 
te the food. 
ced during 
work by simpler and more stable ones, which are elimin 
the organism ; while the energy which h 
up and appears as heat, muscular contractions, thought-force, 
1 Origin of the Fittest. 
