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according to necessary laws, from which he has no means of emancipating 
himself.” * ° 
Again — and in the following quotation I will draw attention 
to his recognition of the automatic principle of the intellect 
which I have previously indicated : 
“ But he is not master of recalling to himself his ideas at pleasure ; their 
association is independent of him ; they are arranged in his brain in despite 
of him, without his own knowledge, where they have made an impression 
more or less profound ; his memory itself depends upon his organization,” &c. 
10. The foregoing passages describe, almost exactly, the psy- 
chological machinery which, under the name of instinct, I have 
considered as supplying the motive power which produces all 
the actions of the lower animals ; and the description is also 
undoubtedly correct so far as it applies only to the animal 
nature of man. And unless we can show the existence in the 
human psychology of a principle differing in kind from the 
instinctive principle delineated in the above quotations, the 
psychological difference between man and brute will remain a 
difference only of degree, and will consist in this, that the desires 
of man are liable to be awakened by a greater variety of causes, 
and that the intellectual power which enables him to apprehend 
these causes is nothing more or less than an extension of the 
regulative machinery to which I have appropriated the term 
“natural sagacity.” Man would still be an automaton; his 
intellectual vision might be keener, his memory more capacious 
and more retentive, but he would still be acted upon necessarily 
by those causes to the influence of which he is naturally sus- 
ceptible ; his religion or his moral code would be motive powers 
only in so far as they resulted from a more far-sighted con- 
sideration for his own happiness; and the conflict between 
reason and passion would degenerate into a conflict between 
two different inclinations. I do not notice the obvious objection 
to this familiar theory — 'that it cuts at the root of moral re- 
sponsibility. This is of course a weighty objection to its practical 
adoption, and is a reason why we should examine it far more 
carefully than is possible within the limits of this paper. The 
consensus gentium is in favour of a fundamental distinction 
between desire and the rational will ; and on this question the 
consensus gentium is of peculiar and especial value; for it is 
founded on the self-knowledge of each individual. 
# System of Nature. 
