EDMUND MONTGOMERY-ARE WE CONSCIOUS AUTOMATA? 
73 
bi-section of our unitary being into the two seemingly incommensurable 
entities, called respectively body and mind, their mode of intercommuni¬ 
cation became the central puzzle of philosophy. 
Under this dualistic aspect, we find, outside of consciousness, nothing 
but a world of mechanically actuated matter; inside consciousness, a 
world replete with pdeal feelings and thoughts, and, strange to say, no 
rationally conceivable interaction between the two. 
To bridge this provoking chasm, the Cartesians assumed a “concursus 
divinus,” a divine concurrence each time body is seemingly acting on 
mind, or mind on body. Spinoza sought to escape from the perplexing 
dilemma by postulating an absolute substance, of which the two incom¬ 
mensurable substances in question were conceived as attributes, assert¬ 
ing, then, simply that the order and connection of thought is, by force 
of eternal concordance, ever the same as the order and connection of 
things. Leibnitz advanced, in explanation of the same riddle, his cele¬ 
brated two-clock arrangement, by means of a divinely pre-established 
harmony; Kant believed that free causation in a surmised intelligible 
world appeared as necessitated causation in the sensible world; and so on 
in endless variations have futile attempts been made to overcome this 
estrangement between mental awareness and bodily actions. 
To all these eminent thinkers man remained, therefore, in verity, but 
a conscious automaton, whose physically ineffective mind is miraculously 
brought into harmony with his mechanically executed actions. 
But, quite irrespective of atomic mechanics, with its ultimate “ada¬ 
mantine” material particles, knocked from outside by transient modes 
of motion or energy into the grouped arrangements which constitute the 
things of the perceptible world, quite irrespective of mechanically neces¬ 
sitated causation, does not biological evolution, in its sundry expressions, 
teach the same fatalistic doctrine of pure automatism? Here it is either 
through fortuitous variations, selected in the struggle for existence, that 
organic development is held to be effected; or, as others will have it, 
through pre-destined developmental tendencies, inherent from the be¬ 
ginning in the primordial germ of life; or, again, ideally expressed, 
through a power, not ourselves, making for progress and righteousness. 
Is it not strange that man, in verity the most self-willed being in 
creation, so readily abdicates in theory his power of self-determination? 
Whenever he sets out to give a reasoned account of the impelling causes 
of his conduct, lie almost invariably comes to the conclusion that he is 
acting under the spell of some overwhelming fatality. He exults in pro¬ 
nouncing himself the impotent plaything of external conditions. First, 
all sorts of evil or good spirits are held to foil or foster his course. Then, 
though highly civilized otherwise, he will not move without propitiating 
his household gods, or consulting the soothsayers. Then he makes himself 
