i88 
A nimal A utomatism. 
.April 
change in the sensorium is the cause of the sensation,” we 
are now gravely called upon to doubt the existence of matter, 
and consequently that of the material encephalon, thus ad- 
mitting all our previous conclusions to be null, void, and 
absolutely meaningless. We are presented with three hypo- 
theses, corresponding to Animism, Materialism, and Pre- 
established Harmony, and are told that all stand on the 
same footing, and that the superiority of the second consists 
solely in its simplicity and convenience. It has been pre- 
viously hinted* that no adherents of the third dodtrine now 
exist, and in a former work the first is thus contemptuously 
dismissed, as unworthy of serious attention and inferior to 
the most shallow Materialism. “ Cabanis may have made 
use of crude and misleading phraseology when he said that 
the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile ; but the 
conception which that much-abused phrase embodies is, 
nevertheless, far more consistent with fadt than the popular 
notion that the mind is a metaphysical entity seated in the 
head, but as independent of the brain as a telegraph ope- 
rator is of his instrument. f In the concluding article of the 
present volume, on “ The Connexion of the Biological 
Sciences with Medicine,” we also find that “ the essence of 
modern, as contrasted with ancient, physiological science, 
appears ... to lie in its antagonism to animistic hypotheses 
and animistic phraseology.” 
Obviously we have not to join issue with Pre-established 
Harmony, or with orthodox Dualism, but with what may be 
denominated Absolute Agnosticism, and which, if logically 
carried out, would be as fatal to science as it is to philosophy. 
There can be no doubt that matter, as we know it, “ is the 
hypothetical substance of physical phenomena — the assump- 
tion of the existence of which is as pure a piece of meta- 
physical speculation as is that of the existence of the sub- 
stance of mind.” Yet it may be possible to show that the 
existence of both is a necessary postulate of valid thought, 
which can only attain consistency when it reaches the further 
proposition, that these apparent two are in reality one. In 
truth, the whole question may be settled by an appeal to 
Descartes’s primary axiom “ Cogito , ergo sum ,” which is no 
mere petitio principii , as its critics have erroneously assumed. 
This will be clear from the following considerations. 
A perception, or mental phenomenon, cannot be supposed 
to possess any energy or power of adtion. As a mere appear- 
ance it can obviously only appear to adt, or to produce any 
* Page 234. 
f Life of Hume, p. 80, 
