[Read before the Texas Academy of Science, June 15, 1896.'] 
ARE WE CONSCIOUS AUTOMATA? 
BY DR. EDMUND MONTGOMERY. 
It is a remarkable fact, and one not to be gainsaid, that with all the 
accumulated experience of ages at our disposal, with all the searching 
aid philosophy has afforded us, with all the keen light shed by science 
on the phenomena of mind and matter, that with the help of all these 
fruitful means of knowledge, the verdict of the competent is still waver¬ 
ing—wavering whether we proud lords of creation have to be regarded 
out and out as mere automatic creatures, as mere puppets in the supernal 
drama of existence, or whether, to some extent at least, we are self-deter¬ 
mined beings. 
It seems natural, and is certainly self-gratifying to most of us, to nur¬ 
ture the fond belief that we are able to act as we choose; that we can 
regulate our life in accordance with a self-determined plan. The imme¬ 
diate inference of consciousness would appear to warrant such a belief. 
We feel as if we were volitionallv conducting our doings toward self-ap¬ 
pointed ends. 
On close examination, however, serious doubts arise as to this power of 
vol itiona 1 self-determination. 
The clay-dauber, for instance, might believe that it is building its 
cells, depositing its eggs, setting out in search of spiders, thrusting its 
paralyzing sting into their nerve-ganglia, filling the cells brim full with 
their succulent bodies—it might believe that it was performing these 
sundry acts of its life-history by self-determined effort. Yet, not only is 
every one of them strictly preconcerted, but their final aim remains to 
the last wholly hidden from the consciousness of the performer. It is 
t bus evidently only an automaton, fulfilling a task for which it itself, 
with all its faculties, is instrumentally, fatefully pre-destined. 
It is the same with all animals. From beginning to end, from birth to 
death, they move—urged hv some pre-potent instigation—through their 
range of pre-appointed activities, wholly unaware of the efficiencies that 
are here steadfastly at work beyond their own conscious realization. 
Whatever amount of conscious awareness may accompany these aimfully 
automatic actions, whether dim or lucid, it would seem to enter only as 
an inefficient bv-play, as a mere passive spectator. 
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