71. If the preceding attempt to disengage the question from the ambiguities of its terms has been successful, we shall find little difficulty in rationally interpreting all the facts adduced in favor of Animal Automatism, without having recourse to a mechanical theory of biological phenomena. The objections to that theory are that it employs terms which have very misleading connotations even when they do not denote phenomena of widely different orders; so that the moral repugnance commonly felt at the attempt to treat the animal organism as if it were a machine, is sustained by the intellectual repugnance at the attempt to explain biological phenomena on principles derived from phenomena of a simpler order.

Remark, in passing, this piquant contradiction: the Automaton theory of Descartes, when applied to the animals, generally excited ridicule or repulsion; whereas the far more inconsistent and mechanical theory of Reflex Action has been almost universally welcomed as a great discovery, though it banishes the Sensibility which Descartes preserved. And further, the philosophers who most loudly protested against the idea that animals were machines, were the philosophers who most insisted that these animals were made, not evolved—planned by their maker, as a watch is planned by its maker, with a distinct purpose and prevision in the disposition of every part; whereas the philosophers who most emphatically reject this notion of organisms being made, are often those who liken organisms to machines.

72. The paradox propounded by Descartes loses much of its strangeness when we understand his meaning. Its terms are infelicitous because of their misleading connotations. When he says that all the actions of animals which seem to be due to Consciousness are in fact produced on the same principles as those of a machine, he means that animals have not souls to direct their actions; but since, on being questioned, he is ready to admit that animals have sensation, perception, emotion, and memory, his denial of their souls practically comes to much the same as the ordinary position that animals have not Thought nor Consciousness of Self.220 The admission of sensation is, however, quite enough to mark the essential difference between an organism and a machine.

73. It was really a great step taken by Descartes when he directed attention to the fact that all animal actions were executed in strict conformity with mechanical principles, because both before his time, and since, we may observe a great disregard of the animal mechanism, and a disposition to interpret the phenomena on metaphysical principles. But the connotations of the term “machine” were such as to lead the mind away from the special conditions of the vital mechanism, and fix it exclusively on the general conditions of machinery. Hence his opponents misunderstood him, and some of his followers made the same oversight, and ended by eliminating sensation altogether. In pursuance of this mechanical point of view, to the exclusion of the biological, Thought and even Consciousness have been eliminated from among the organic agencies, and are said to have no more influence in determining even human actions than the whistle of the steam-engine has in directing the locomotive. There are thus two metaphysiological theories. According to the one, Consciousness directs indeed the actions of the organism, but is not itself an organic process—it sits apart, like a musical performer playing on an instrument. According to the other, it is not a directing agency, but an accessory product of certain organic processes, which processes may go on quite as well without any accompaniment and interference of Consciousness.

74. Two observations arise here. First, we observe a want of due recognition of the objective and subjective aspects, and their respective criteria. Secondly, we observe mental facts of irresistible certainty interpreted by material hypotheses of questionable value; and not only so, but a higher validity is assigned to the material hypotheses than to the mental facts they are invented to explain. That we are conscious, and that our actions are determined by sensations, emotions, and ideas, are facts which may or may not be explained by reference to material conditions, but which no material explanation can render more certain. That animals resemble us in this as in other respects is an induction of the highest probability. It is also a fact that many actions take place, as we say, unconsciously and involuntarily; and that some take place now consciously, now unconsciously. These facts also we endeavor to explain: and when we find that some of the unconscious and involuntary actions take place after the brain has been removed, this is interpreted on the material hypothesis of the brain being the sole seat of sensation and consciousness; and is urged in favor of the hypothesis that consciousness cannot be an agent in the mechanism. Here the confusion of objective and subjective aspects is patent. Consciousness as a subjective fact cannot be a material or objective fact. But may it not be another aspect of that which is objective? So long as we are dealing with the objective aspect, we have nothing but material processes in a material mechanism before us. A change within the organism is caused by a neural stimulation, and the resulting action is a reflex on the muscles. Here there is simply a transference of motion by a material mechanism. There is in this no evidence of a subjective agency; there could be none. But when we come to investigate the process, we find that it differs from similar processes in anorganisms, by the necessary co-operation of special conditions, and among these—the vital conditions—there are those which in their subjective aspect we express not in terms of Matter and Motion, but in terms of Feeling, i.e. not in objective but in subjective terms. I see a stone move on being struck; I also see a man shrink on being struck, and hear a dog howl on being kicked. I do not infer that the stone feels as the man and dog feel, because I know the stone and the dog to be differently constituted, and infer a corresponding difference in their reactions. I infer that the man and dog feel, because I know they are like myself, and conclude that what I feel they feel, under like conditions.

75. Descartes says that animals are sensitive automata. They always act as we sometimes act, i.e. when we are not conscious of what we do, as in singing, walking, playing the piano, etc. We are said to do these things mechanically, automatically, and hence the conclusion that these actions are those of a pure mechanism. But it would be truer to say that we never act mechanically, we always act organically. “When one who falls from a height throws his hands forwards to save his head,” says Descartes, “it is in virtue of no ratiocination that he performs this action” (that depends on the definition: in the Logic of Feeling there is a process of ratiocination identical with that in the Logic of Signs). “It does not depend upon his mind” (again a question of definition), “but takes place merely because his senses being affected by present danger” (senses, then, have a perception of danger?) “some change arises in his brain which determines the animal spirits to pass thence into the nerves in such a manner as is required to produce this motion, in the same way as in a machine, and without his mind being able to hinder it. Now since we observe this in ourselves, why should we be so much astonished if the light reflected from the body of a wolf into the eye of a sheep has the same force to excite in it the motion of flight?”

Here, both in the case of the man and the sheep, there is presupposed the very mental experience which is denied. The young child will not throw out its arm to protect itself; but after many experiences of falling and stumbling, there is an organized perception of the impending danger, and the means of averting it, and it is this which determines the throwing out of the arms. If this is not a mental fact—a process of judgment—then the logical conclusion by which a financier on hearing a war rumor orders his broker to sell stock, is not a mental fact. The light reflected from the body of a wolf would not disturb the sheep unless its own, or its inherited organized experience were ready there to respond. But this organized experience, you say, enters into the mechanism? Yes; but it cannot be made to enter into the mechanism of an automaton, because however complex that mechanism may be, and however capable of variety of action, it is constructed solely for definite actions on calculated lines: all its readjustments must have been foreseen, it is incapable of adjusting itself to unforeseen circumstances. Hence every interruption in the prearranged order either throws it out of gear, or brings it to a standstill. It is regulated, not self-regulating. The organism, on the contrary—conspicuously so in its more complex forms—is variable, self-regulating, incalculable. It has selective adaptation (p. 221) responding readily and efficiently to novel and unforeseen circumstances; acquiring new modes of combination and reaction. An automaton that will learn by experience, and adapt itself to conditions not calculated for in its construction, has yet to be made; till it is made, we must deny that organisms are machines. Automatism in the organism implies Memory and Perception. A sudden contact—a sudden noise—a vague form seen in the twilight will excite the mechanism according to its organized experiences. We start automatically, before we automatically interpret the cause; we start first, and then ask, What is that? But we do not always start at sounds or sights which have no association with previous experiences. The child and the man both see the falling glass, but the child does not automatically stretch out a hand to save the glass. Having once learned the action of swimming or billiard-playing, we automatically execute these; without consciously remembering the rules, we unconsciously obey them; each feeling as it rises is linked on to another, each muscle is combined with others in a remembered synthesis.

76. Kempelen’s chess-player surprised the public, but every instructed physiologist present knew that in some way or other its movements were directed by a human mind; simply because no machine could possibly have responded to the unforeseen fluctuations of the human mind opposed to it. Even the mind of a dog or a savage would be incompetent to pass beyond the range of its previous experiences, incompetent to seize the significance of an adversary’s moves on the chessboard. Now just as we conclude that mental agency is essential to a game of chess, so we conclude that Sensibility is essential to the fluctuating responses of an organism under unforeseen circumstances. We can conceive an automaton dog that would bark at the presence of a beggar; but not of an automaton dog that would bark one day at the beggar and the next day wag his tail, remembering the food and patting that beggar had bestowed. Since all we know of machines forbids the idea of their being capable of adjusting their actions to new circumstances, or of evoking through experience new powers of combination, we conclude that wherever this capability of adaptation is present there is an agency in operation which does not belong to the class of mechanical agencies. Goltz has shown that a frog deprived of its brain manifests so much of vision as enables it to avoid obstacles—leaping to the right or to the left of a book placed in its path. This Professor Huxley regards as purely mechanical:—“Although the frog appears to have no sensation of light, visible objects act upon the motor mechanism of its body.” Should we not rather conclude that if the frog had no sensation, no such effect would follow? because although a machine might be constructed to respond to variations of light and shadows, none could be constructed (without Sensibility) to respond to the fluctuating conditions as an organism responds.221 Were the reflex actions of the organism purely mechanical—i.e. involving none of those fluctuating adjustments which characterize Sensibility—the effect would be uniform, and proportional to the impact; but it is variable, and proportional to the static condition of the nervous centres at the moment. Exaggerate this—by strychnine, for instance—and the slightest touch on the skin will produce general convulsions. Lower it—by an anÆsthetic—and no reflex at all will follow a stimulus. In anÆsthesia of the mucous membrane, no reflex of the eyelid, no secretion of tears, follows on the irritation of the membrane; no sneezing follows irritation of the inside of the nose; no vomiting follows irritation of the fauces.

77. The question has long ceased to be whether the organism is a mechanism. To the physiologist it is this before all things. To the psychologist also it has of late years more and more assumed this character; because even when he postulates the existence of a spiritual entity in the organism but not of it, he still recognizes the necessity of a mechanism for the execution of the acts determined by the spirit; and when the psychologist adopts the theory of spiritual phenomena as the subjective aspect of what objectively are material phenomena, he of course regards the bodily mechanism and the mental mechanism as one and the same real.

This settled, the problem of Automatism may be thus stated: Granting the animal organism to be a material mechanism, and all its actions due to the operation of that mechanism, are we to conclude that it is an automaton essentially resembling the automata we construct, the movements of which may, or may not, be accompanied by Feeling, but are in no case determined by Feeling?

Descartes says that animals are sensitive automata. Professor Huxley says that both animals and men are sensitive and conscious automata; so that misleading as the language of Descartes and Professor Huxley often is in what its terms connote, we do them great injustice if we suppose them to have overlooked the points of difference between organisms and machines which have been set forth with so much emphasis in a preceding chapter; and the reader is requested to understand that without pretending to say how much the inevitable connotation of their language expresses their opinions, and how much it may have only led to their being misunderstood, my criticisms are directed against this connotation and this interpretation.