70 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
unconquerable conviction the vivid imagination of this courageous Do¬ 
minican monk. 
Deep down in an inquisitorial dungeon, secreted from all the world 
and its notice, himself all-forsaken, be endured, for the sake of this glo¬ 
rious belief, year after year, the infliction of untold tortures. Without 
wavering or weakening, this intensely sensitive child of the South bore 
it all with steadfast fortitude, unencouraged, unloved, unadmired, by his 
fellowmen, in awful solitude, unfalteringly loyal to his divine enlighten¬ 
ment. And when his last hour arrived,* the transcendent revelation 
nerved him to ascend with undaunted spirit, amid the execrations of the 
Roman mob, the blazing pile that was forever to quench his eloquent 
voice—but signally failed to fulfill the expectation of his torturers by si¬ 
lencing, also, the undying truth he so heroically proclaimed. 
Only 85 years later, Newton, by force of the now established physical 
theory wielded by him with consummate mathematical genius, disclosed 
irrefragably the exact mechanical law which, to the utmost depths of 
illimitable space, is undeviatingly followed by innumerable systems of 
speeding, circling, whirling worlds in their solemn, tireless, spheric 
dance toward creative fulfillment. 
An essential impetus to the mechanical interpretation of nature was 
also given by Harvey’s discovery of the mechanical circulation of the 
blood, published in 1628. It induced Descartes to formulate an out- 
and-out mechanical view of the organism and its vital functions. In his 
answer to Morus, he says: “It appears to me a very remarkable circum¬ 
stance that no movement can take place, either in the bodies of beasts, 
or even in our own, if these bodies have not in themselves all the organs 
and instruments by means of which the very same movements would be 
accomplished in a machine.” And in his “Traite de l’Homme” he spe¬ 
cializes the purely automatic interpretation of all vital functions, an 
interpretation which led him to deny to animals even conscious sensi¬ 
bility, while, to be sure, he allowed to men the super-position of a think¬ 
ing substance, somehow miraculously connected with the automatic or¬ 
ganism. “I desire,” he says, “that you should consider that the func¬ 
tions of the bodily machine naturally proceed from the mere arrange¬ 
ment of its organs, neither more nor less than the movements of a clock 
or other automaton from that of its weights and wheels.” 
We have to confess that, despite the strenuous philosophic and scien¬ 
tific efforts of the last two centuries, no logically valid escape from the 
conscious-automaton theory has yet been found. 
When, in the light of the extensive additional experience, carefully 
gathered during these 200 years, we contemplate how vital processes of 
the most complex nature may, without the assistance of consciousness, 
attain aimfullv preconcerted ends; and, on the other hand, how abso- 
