EDMUND MONTGOMERY-ARE WE CONSCIOUS AUTOMATA? 
71 
lutely dependent on definite organic structure special modes of con¬ 
sciousness are proved to be, we shall be forced to conclude that it is no 
easy matter to ascribe to consciousness its right place in the economy of 
life. 
Persons^ not familiarly conversant with natural science, and more es¬ 
pecially with biology, are slow to realize how its votaries are irresistibly 
compelled to submit their traditional ideas and intuitions to 
the stern correction of well-ascertained and verifiable facts of 
nature. Such unscientific persons, however cultured otherwise, can 
hardly be expected to understand the strength and insistence of scien¬ 
tific convictions, though they seem flagrantly to contradict currently ac¬ 
cepted notions. To people who habitually move without scientific re¬ 
straint in the frictionless expanse of intuitive thought the conscious-au¬ 
tomaton theory will naturally appear a monstrous fallacy. 
Yet, when nightly to sleep they give their conscious powers away, 
withdrawing from the garish scenes of the sense-obtruding world to 
those mysterious depths where all creative work is wrought; there, out 
of all self-control, away from all conscious participation, nature’s au¬ 
tomatic travail, with unremitting toil, is keeping not only intact and 
whole their entire being, but is restoring to full efficiency its mental and 
other vital energies, maimed in the heated struggle of its waking hours. 
And mothers, when they receive with tearful joy and tenderest so¬ 
licitude their new-born babes, full-fashioned out of the creative depths 
of unconscious being, are they not holding to their loving breasts the 
mystic consignment of all times, the embodied result of all vital travail, 
their ownest own, and yet the fruit of ages upon ages, bearing our 
world’s ripest hope? 
Surely, when such supreme creative marvels are wrought beyond con¬ 
scious awareness and participation, it is, after all, no wonder that the 
conscious-automaton theory has forced itself from various standpoints 
upon investigators of nature. 
And just as certain as functionary organic structures become elabor¬ 
ated without conscious interference, just as certain do all modes of con¬ 
sciousness, all sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts and volitions 
•depend in the strictest manner on specific organic structure in efficient 
activity. 
Careful experiments by Hitzig, Ferrier and others, frequently verified 
since, have proved that by stimulating definite parts of the brain, move¬ 
ments are automatically produced by con traction of definite sets of mus¬ 
cles, which, otherwise, are only effected by so-called volitional action. 
The cortex of the brain has thus been mapped out, not by any means 
into complex mental faculties, as pretended by the pseudo-science of 
phrenology, but into definite motor and sensory regions. Thus the struc- 
