78 TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
as unconscious, automatic activity, can be distinctly realized by watch¬ 
ing, for instance, our breathing movements. These are generally car¬ 
ried on automatically and unconsciously. By directing our attention to 
them, we can, however, become consciously aware of their automatic ac¬ 
tivity. This is a genuine instance of conscious automatism, for there 
is no effective intercommunication between the movements and the 
awareness of them. But we are able to assume, moreover, voluntary con¬ 
trol of the movements. We can, at will, breathe quicker or slower, deep¬ 
er or less deep, or entirely inhibit the movements for a time. The con¬ 
sciousness of this voluntary performance, compared with the conscious¬ 
ness of the mere automatic action, will clearly indicate the difference be¬ 
tween volitionally spontaneous and mere automatic activity. Here the 
two activities have entered into effective intercommunication. The ac¬ 
tivity which underlies the movements has become dependent on the ac¬ 
tivity which underlies the conscious volition. 
Few people, when absorbed in their routine rush through existence, 
get to realize how wonderfully and fearfully they are made. 
From out the inscrutable depths of nature myriads of dark effluences 
strike with subtle touch the attuned chords of our responsive being, and 
lo! the perceptible world, and we therein, stand revealed in the conscious 
medium of vivid sensations and perceptions. A still more exquisitely 
refined play of intrinsic agitation, and our moment of awareness is 
filled with those intellectualized emotions and volitions that constitute 
our imperceivable self-consciousness. 
Yet, we do not, in reality, consist of these mere conscious states, nor 
are we merely lumps of material elements moulded into the shape of a 
mammalian biped. 
Time-originated beings, livingly moulded in the fiery clash of battling 
forces, do not consist of such flimsy stuff as dreams are made of; nor do 
they consist of so intrinsically inert a material as a mechanically agitated 
aggregate of particles is held to be. 
As Goethe says: 
“ Und keine Zeit, und keine Macht zerstiickelt 
Gepraegte Form die lebend sich entwickelt.” 
The life we bear, so singularly gifted with transcendent proficiencies, 
how strikingly different from lifeless nature! What contrast between 
the toilsomely sustained complexity of our life-quickened organization 
and the facile and uniform maintenance or random mutation of inani¬ 
mate things! With the intuition of its world-wide bearings and sympa¬ 
thies inwoven in its all-harmonizing constitution, our living being awak¬ 
ens aimfully to confront, amid these immemorial memories, an other¬ 
wise senseless, impercipient world, which buries from instant to instant 
all its casual happenings in perpetual forgetfulness. 
