1883.] Animal Automatism . 187 
ordination.” If we remove only the anterior division of the 
brain lying in front of the optic lobes, the frog is still blind, 
deaf, and destitute of volition. Yet if the plane on which 
he is seated be inclined, he will change his position so as to 
save himself from falling, and, though he cannot see, will 
yet avoid any objedt placed between his head and the light, 
by passing to the right or left of it. “ Although the frog, 
therefore, appears to have no sensation of light, visible ob- 
jects adt through its brain upon the motor mechanism of its 
body.” Consciousness, then, cannot be regarded as the 
cause of “ voluntary ” motion, but only as its frequent con- 
comitant. This inference is further supported by the re- 
markable case of a French sergeant, who, in consequence of 
a serious injury to the brain, became subjedt to periodical 
trances, during which he pursued his usual avocations, but 
was apparently destitute of spontaneity and sentience. 
Though he ate, drank, smoked, and even wrote letters, he 
was totally insensible to pain, or to any physical impressions, 
with the doubtful exception of impressions of touch. We 
come naturally to the conclusion that “ the argumentation 
which applies to brutes holds equally good of men ; and, 
therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, 
are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain- 
substance. . . . The feeling we call volition is not the cause 
of a voluntary adf, but the symbol of that state of the brain 
which is the immediate cause of that adt.” It is surely clear 
that “ we have as much reason for regarding the modes of 
motion of the nervous system as the cause of the state of 
consciousness, as we have for regarding any event as the 
cause of another.” 
In the essay on “ Sensation and the Sensiferous Organs” 
we find fadts not less decisive and utterances not less un- 
equivocal. The creative power of our material organisation 
is fully recognised in a sentence like the following “ The 
epithelium may be said to be receptive, the nerve-fibres 
transmissive, and the sensorium sensifacient,” the last word 
being, as we shall see later, of especial importance. “ The 
sensiferous apparatuses are, as it were, factories, all of which, 
at the one end, receive raw materials of a similar kind,— 
namely, modes of motion,* — while, at the other, each turns 
out a special produdt— -the feeling which constitutes the kind 
of sensation charadteristic of it.” 
But if we here take breath, and hope to be allowed to 
repose in a logical and consistent Monism, we shall be 
greatly mistaken. Though the brain is sense-creating; and 
therefore world-creating ; though, “ so far as we know, the 
