EDMUND MONTGOMERY—ARE WE CONSCIOUS AUTOMATA? 
77 
strated that the force by which vital movements are effected is not de¬ 
rived from any combustion whatever, but that these movements are in 
every one of their stages the mass-manifestation of a definite cycle of 
chemical activity, occurring in the very substance which exhibits the 
motions. 
Indeed, muscular action, as well as all other vital function, is a display 
of specific energies, strictly inherent in the wondrous complexity of the 
slowly elaborated molecular structure which performs the function. This 
molecular complexity is the ph}dogenetic result of the vital interaction 
of countless generations of living individuals with their surrounding me¬ 
dium. Vital energy is thus in no instance the mere transfer of some 
other energy furnished from external sources. It is, on the contrary, the 
display of most peculiar spontaneous powers, inwrought, and persistent¬ 
ly maintaining themselves, in the living structures. Or, more correctly, 
vital energy is the display of the very forces which constitute the living 
structures. For these structures are themselves but the visible mani¬ 
festation of such vital forces. 
How, then, can a vital force-manifestation, issuing from the astound¬ 
ing hereditary wealth of such a minutely organized and livingly sustained 
structure ever yield to any mechanical explanation? Vital activity, in 
every one of its manifestations, is wholly an emanation from within. 
Any influence believed to be actuating from outside the organism and its 
life, whether brought to bear in the shape of miraculous intervention, or 
of an animal soul, or of vital spirits, or heat, of electrical fluids or com¬ 
bustion of food-particles, whatever the name of such surmised extrinsic 
causative agency, it has to he utterly eliminated from biology before we 
can hope to gain an understanding of the transcendent wealth and im¬ 
port of individual existence. 
It is as an indiscerptihle organic being that I am endowed with the 
power of volitionally moving the organs which bring me into relation 
with the outside world. I can move them in definite individual ways, 
or may refrain from moving them. When, in my right mind, I hold a 
pistol in my hand, I can, irrespective of any ever so potent instigation, 
either pull the trigger, or abstain from pulling it. And this freedom of 
choice as regards my so-called volitional movements is exactly what con¬ 
stitutes me a responsible being. 
If you ask me how I manage to perform this executive or inhibitory 
feat I may, perhaps, be able to tell when we know how a gas-molecule 
manages, by force of its so-called elastic endowment, to impart resilient 
motion to other molecules; how the efficiencies that underlie the phe¬ 
nomena of gravitation, cohesion, chemical affinity, magnetism and elec¬ 
tricity manage to produce their perceptible effects. 
Meanwhile, the difference between voluntary and conscious, as well 
