ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
Part II. 
THE aim of my previous* paper was to establish that—by com- 
bining the information we may obtain from the study of the 
physiological conditions under which the actions of animals are 
performed, with that which we derive from our own conscious 
experiences,—we can draw a tolerably definite line of demarcation 
between (1) the primary automatism, which seems to constitute the 
sole spring of action in the lower types of animal life, and to 
depend upon the original or congenital endowments of their nervo- 
muscular mechanism; but which shows itself in Man in such 
actions only as are directly concerned in the maintenance of his 
organic functions: (2) the secondary automatism that is concerned 
in the execution of all those actions which man has to gain the 
power of performing by a process of “ training,” but which, after 
they have become habitual, proceed (when once started) ’without 
any intentional direction, in virtue of the acquired endowments of 
his nervo-muscular mechanism; and (3) the volitional direction, 
which involves a determinate nisus of the Ego, based on a distinct 
conception of the purpose to be attained. 
Over the primarily-automatic actions, it has been shown that the 
Ego has either no control at all, as in the case of the heart, or but 
a limited control, as in the case of the respiratory muscles. Over 
the secondarily-automatic, on the other hand, the Ego has com- 
plete control when he chooses to exert it; thus, although his 
bete goes on walking of itself, while his ame is otherwise engaged, 
* See Contemporary Review for Feb. 1875, p. 397. ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
941 
tli© time can pull up the bete whenever (having resumed its con- 
trol) it may desire to do so. Further, even in the so-called 
“voluntary” movements, the ante works entirely through the 
instrumentality of the bete;—in other words, the will does not (as 
is commonly supposed) operate directly upon the nervo-muscular 
apparatus, singling out the muscles which are to be brought into 
play, and combining these into co-ordinate action, but simply 
commands the bete, “ do thisand the bete, if previously habituated 
to the performance of the action, forthwith executes it, just as 
“ Obedient Yamen 
Answered ‘ Amen,’ 
And did 
As he was bid.” 
All our conscious experiences, I urged, justify the further asser- 
tion that the very same actions, or successions of action, may be 
purely automatic or non-intentional at one time, purely voluntary 
or purposive at another. And here I join issue with Professor 
Huxley; who argues from the obvious automatism of certain 
actions which bear in themselves the distinct impress of purpose 
or intention, that the universal belief of mankind as to the mental 
causality of volitional or emotional movements is scientifically 
wrong, for that they really originate in certain molecular move- 
ments of the brain, of which these mental states are the mere 
concomitant “ symbols in consciousness.” “ The feeling we call 
‘ volition,’ ” he says, “ is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the 
symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of 
that act;” and he gives, as an illustration of his meaning, the 
blowing of the steam-whistle, which signals, but does not cause, 
the starting of the locomotive. 
Now, as a physiologist, I, of course, recognize a certain “mode 
of motion ” in the brain as the immediate antecedent of the 
actions in question, whether they be performed volitionally or 
automatically; and I can see nothing more unscientific in affirm- 
ing that this “ mode of motion ” may be caused by a mental state, 
than in affirming (as Professor Huxley explicitly does) that the 
mental states which we call sensations, ideas, and emotions are 
caused by “modes of motion” in the brain. For the universal 
testimony of experience is as clear upon the one point as upon 
the other; and there is not the least difficulty in accounting for 
the facts on which Professor Huxley founds his argument, in 
perfect consistency with that experience. We are daily doing 
things which we originally learned to do by design, but which 
have come to be habitual, under circumstances which show our 
performance of them to be purely automatic. Thus, when a 
gentleman goes to bed at night, one of the first things lie 
habitually does is to take out his watch, wind it up, and lay it on 
his dressing-table. I daresay that it is a common experience with 942 
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
others, as it is with myself, that if we go upstairs with a pre- 
occupied mind to dress for an evening party, instead of to undress 
for bed, the act of taking out the watch suggests the winding it up ; 
and we may “come to ourselves” in the middle of it. I know a 
young gentleman who, from the force of a good habit, knelt down 
to say his prayers under the same circumstances : and a mercantile 
friend, who had come home tired from his day’s work in the 
city, and had gone up to dress for a dinner-party for which his 
wife had already prepared herself, not making his appearance 
downstairs when expected, was found by his wife in bed—the act 
of undressing having suggested its ordinary sequence, which the 
will, through the mental pre-occupation, had failed to alter. Now, 
to affirm that, because these habitual actions were executed 
automatically, they never were the results of volitional direction, 
but merely expressed certain brain-movements which at the 
same time excited “ the feeling we call volition,” seems to me to 
be alike unsupported by evidence and inconsistent with experience. 
I might just as well say, when I hear a tune played upon an organ 
furnished with both keys and a barrel, that if it can be played by 
the turning of the barrel, it cannot be also played by the fingers 
of a musician. The immediate antecedent is the same in both 
cases—the successive lifting of certain levers, which open valves 
that admit wind to the pipes; the very same levers being lifted 
either by the frets upon the revolving barrel, or by the depression 
of the keys put down by the musician’s fingers. The parallel is 
complete as regards such a primarily-automatic action as that of 
coughing, which, while provided-for by the original mechanism, 
can also be called forth volitionally; and it would be also com- 
pleted as to any secondary or acquired automatism, if we could 
suppose the raising of the frets upon the barrel to be accomplished 
by the musician’s repeated performance of the tune upon the keys, 
so that the tune, when worked into the barrel by his determinate 
action, should be reproduced without his agency whenever the 
barrel is turned. As Professor Huxley, equally with myself, 
recognizes the fact that the nervous mechanism grows to the 
mode in which it is habitually exercised, the only question between 
us, in this stage of our inquiry, is whether mental changes can or 
cannot be the causes of physical actions. 
On this question opinions will differ according to the 
point of view from which it is looked at. Professor Huxley 
has fully avowed his preference for the physical aspect 
only, and his desire that mental phenomena should be ex- 
pressed, so far as possible, in terms of matter. It seems to 
me, on the other hand, that there is something in our self-con- 
sciousness—in our power, not only of picturing the external world 
to ourselves, but of reflecting upon our own mental states,—and in ON THE DOCTRINE OE IIUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
943 
our conviction of possessing a power of choice between two or 
more courses of action, whether mental or bodily,—which 
necessitates the conception of an Ego as something uncon- 
ditioned by material states and physical forces. From this point 
of view, the body is to be considered rather as the instru- 
ment of communication between the Ego and what is external to 
it, than as a self-acting machine, of whose movements our mental 
states are mere “ symbols in consciousness.” And I find myself 
quite unable to conceive that when I am consciously attempting, 
whether by speech or by writing, to excite ideas in the minds of my 
hearers or readers, corresponding with those which are present to 
my consciousness at the moment, it is not my mind which is put- 
ting my lips or my hand in motion, but that (as Professor Huxley 
affirms) it is my body which is moving of itself, and simply keeping 
my mind informed of its movements. Whilst quite prepared to 
accept such a doctrine in regard to any of those established suc- 
cessions which run-on as automatically as the movements of our 
legs in walking,* I can no more believe that my present writing 
is anything else than an expression, in bodily movement, of the 
consciously-formed purpose of my mind, than I can believe that 
a piece of delicate handiwork—the painting of a miniature, for 
instance, or a minute dissection—requiring constant visual guid- 
ance and trained dexterity of movement, can be executed for the 
first time without a distinct volitional direction of each act. 
It is not so long ago that Professor Huxley himself spoke of 
the belief “ that our volition counts for something as a condition 
of the course of events,” as one which “ can be verified experi- 
mentally as often as we like to try,” and as therefore “ stand- 
ing upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can 
rest, forming one of our highest truths ” (“Lay Sermons,” p. 160). 
Yet for this belief he now calls on us to substitute the doctrine 
that the course of events is determined solely by a “ motion 
of molecules” of which the feeling we call “ will ” is only a con- 
comitant. I see in this the natural issue of that preference for the 
expression of mental phenomena in terms of physics, which Pro- 
* I remember to have compared notes with the late Sir H. Holland upon an experience 
that we found to be common to both—that of unconsciously humming tunes while the- 
attention was absorbed in something else. Sir Henry told me that he was sure that he 
■did this habitually whilst walking and thinking, from the frequency with which he 
dropped (as it were) into the middle of an air, the previous part of which seemed to have 
been gone through by his brain, without his Ego being aware of it. And I replied that 
not only had I the same reason to believe that I had often thus “ unconsciously cere- 
brated” the first part of a tune, but that I had been sometimes called to account by others 
for disturbing them by the audible humming of tunes whilst reading intently, the said 
tunes not being either present to my consciousness as concepts, or heard by myself as 
audible sounds. Here it is clear that the reproduction of the cerebral state was a physical, 
not a mental act; and that the mental affection, when it occurred, was (as in other 
cases of automatism) not the cause but the consequence of the physical. But if I will to 
hum or to sing a tune, the movements which I execute to carry out my consciously- 
formed intention seem to me no less clearly to originate in my Ego, the physical changes 
being the consequences, not the causes of the mental. 944 
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
fessor Huxley avowed on t-lie same occasion, and to which I have 
just expressed my objection. And it will not give me surprise 
if my friend at some future time should again change his stand- 
point, and, seeing that there is a golden as well as a silver side 
to the shield, should return to the belief that mental experiences 
cannot be ignored by any true psychologist, even though they 
may not be consistent with his physical conceptions. 
If Professor Huxley’s present doctrine be true, not only of particular- 
cases, but of human life generally, it follows that its stream would 
flow on exactly as it does, if we had no consciousness at all 
of what we are about; that the actions and reactions of the 
“ ideaginous molecules ” would do the work of the philoso- 
pher, even if they never generated ideas in his mind; that he 
would give forth its results in books or lectures, not from any in- 
tention or desire that his books should be read and his lectures 
heard, so as to bring the thoughts of other minds into relation with 
his own, but simply because certain molecular motions in his 
brain call forth the movements of speech or writing; and that, in 
like manner, the noblest works of genius—the master-pieces of" 
the poet, the artist, and the musician—would none the less have 
been produced, if the “ symbols in consciousness ” had never been 
evoked in their producers’ nature, and would prove none the less 
attractive to other automata, if the molecular movements of their 
brains should be equally incapable of exciting either intellectual 
or emotional activity; such activity being, to use a legal phrase, 
mere ‘‘surplusage.” To me this seems like a reductio ad absurdum; 
but that is, I have been publicly informed, because I am getting 
old, and my brain is becoming ossified, so as no longer to be able 
to keep up with the advance of other brains. 
It may doubtless be urged by Professor Huxley, however, that 
«ven admitting volitions and emotions to be causes of the bodily 
actions which express them, that does not make Man the less an 
automaton; these mental states being themselves “conditioned” 
by physical changes, so as to be the no less necessary consequents- 
of antecedent states, than are any physical actions of their 
antecedents. This view being common to all automatists, will bo 
better discussed after I have marked out the relation of my own 
views to those of Professor Clifford and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
By Professor Clifford the mind is described as “ a stream of 
feelings which inns parallel to, and simultaneous Avitli a certain 
part of the action of the body, that is to say, that particular part 
of the action of the brain in which the cerebrum and the sensory 
tract are excited;” and he neither admits such excitement to be 
a cause of any kind of affection of the consciousness, nor allows 
that any state of consciousness can excite physical change in the 
brain, A question of this kind is not to be disposed of by mere ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
945 
assertions, however positive. Looking at it from its physical side 
alone, and relying exclusively upon his physical experiences, 
Professor Clifford thinks himself entitled not only to ignore the 
more immediate mental experiences which lead men who are 
at least his equals in mathematical and physical ability (Mr. 
Kirkman* and M. Dumas,f for example) to a precisely opposite 
conclusion, but to speak of the assertion that the will influences 
matter as “ nonsense—the crude materialism of the savage,” 
although, as Mr. Tylor has shown us, the “ animism ” of the savage, 
who refers every phenomenon to the agency of a conscious Ego, 
much more resembles spiritualism. “The two things,” says, Pro- 
fessor Clifford, “ are on two utterly different platforms—the physical 
facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by 
themselves. There is a parallelism between them, but there is 
no interference of one with the other. If anybody says that the 
will influences matter, the statement is not untrue, but it is non- 
sense. The will is not a material thing—it is not a mode of material 
motion. Such an assertion belongs to the crude materialism of 
the savage. The only thing which influences matter is the 
position of surrounding matter or the motion of surrounding 
matter.” I think that most of the readers of this remarkable 
passage will agree with me that the only justification of it which 
the writer could give, would be his own proposition of a scientific 
rationale of the phenomena to be accounted for. But so far is he 
from attempting this, that he abandons the attempt as hopeless; 
repudiating Professor Huxley’s admission of a causal relation 
between neuroses and psychoses, as no less unscientific than the 
converse; and reverting to what is really the Leibnitzian doctrine 
of “ pre-established harmonies” without its Theology,—of which 
Professor Huxley remarks that those may accept it who choose to 
do so. 
My contention with Professor Clifford, therefore, is that until he 
can show that he knows all about matter and its dynamical relations,! 
Professor Huxley’s assertion—based on “ the normal experience of 
healthy men ”—that running a pin into one’s flesh is the cause of 
* See his “ Philosophy without Assumptions,” a paper read before the Literary and 
Philosophical Society of Liverpool. 
f See his recent “ Eloge” of De la Rive, in the Academie des Sciences, 
j How little is known on this point compared with what remains to be known, 
may bo judged from the marvellous discovery lately made by Mr. Crookes, and ex- 
hibited by him at the Royal Society on the 7th of April. If Professor Clifford had been 
told a month ago that the incidence of the light of a candle upon the blackened surface of 
four small discs, whose reverse sides are white, would drive round in vacuo with 
considerable velocity the horizontal wheel that carries them at its margin, under con- 
ditions which seem to exclude the posssibility of any other agency, he would probably 
have designated the statement as “nonsense.” But of the eminent Physicists who 
witnessed this phenomenon, no one seemed to doubt that the only explanation of it lies 
in the existence of a mechanical power in radiant Light and Heat, of which none of them 
had previously any conception, and of which the Undulatory theory, complete as it is in 
regard to optical phenomena, gives no account whatever. THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
946 
tlie state of consciousness which we call pain, and my assertion 
that those states of the conscious Ego which we call volitions and. 
emotions are the causes of the bodily actions that execute the former 
and express the latter, have a better claim to be accepted as truths 
of science than Professor Clifford’s assertion that such statements 
are simply “nonsense.” A more prolonged and varied study of 
mental physiology and pathology may perhaps hereafter lead 
Professor Clifford to admit that he lias been, to say the least, a 
little premature in thus pronouncing positively upon the absence 
of relation between two vast classes of phenomena, the intimate 
nexus of which comes out more clearly the more it is searched 
into. 
With Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, this nexus constitutes 
the essential basis of Psychological science. “The object of 
Psychology,” he says, “ is not the connection between internal 
phenomena, nor the connection between external phenomena, 
but the connection between these two connections.” In this I 
am entirely in accordance with him; as I am also in the preference 
he avows for translating physical into mental phenomena, rather 
than mental into physical, if we are forced to choose between the 
two alternatives. He would, I think, fully accept the doctrine 
(essentially that of Augustine) which was so forcibly pro- 
pounded by John S. Mill in his posthumous Essays, that 
“feeling and thought are much more real to us than any- 
thing else; they are the only things which we directly know to be 
real, all things else being the unknown conditions on which these 
depend.” It must be borne in mind that the whole fabric of our 
Physiological science, though professing to be built up upon ex- 
perience, is really based upon what Mill designated “mere assump- 
tions to account for our sensations.” We know nothing real 
about matter—“ itself we do not perceive, we are not conscious of 
it; ” what we really know are the sensations we receive from it. 
And thus, as I myself urged on a former occasion, while our notion 
of force, arising directly out of our own consciousness of effort, is 
one of those primary cognitions which we cannot dissociate from 
our own consciousness of personality,—our notion of matter, 
its properties, motions, and laws, is altogether a construction of 
our own intellects. This necessity for the intervention of Mind in 
every stage of our interpretation of nature, has been pointed out 
by Principal Caird, with admirable clearness, in the address which 
he delivered at the opening of the present session of the University 
of Glasgow:— 
“ You cannot build up a world out of experience, without regard to 
thought and its laws ; for in the very effort you tacitly presuppose what 
you are trying to ignore. You cannot reach mind as an ultimate product 
of matter and force ; for in so doing you have already begun with mind ; 
the earliest step of the inquiry involves categories of mind, and it is only ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
947 
in terms of mind that the very problem you are investigating- can be so 
much as stated. . . Whether there be such a thing as an absolute 
world outside of thought, whether there be such things as matter and 
material atoms, existing in themselves before any mind begins to perceive 
or think about them, is not to the purpose. If there be such atoms, at 
any rate you, before you begin to make anything of them, must think them; 
and you can never, by thinking about atoms, or thinking about anything, 
prove that there is no such thing as thought. Before you reach thought 
as a last result, you would need to eliminate it from the data of the pro- 
blem with which you start; and that you can never do, any more than 
you can stand on your own shoulders or outstrip your shadow. The fun- 
damental vice, then, of materialism is, that that out of which mind is to be 
extracted, is itself the creation of mind, and already involves its existence 
as an originating power.” 
I believe that Mr. Herbert Spencer would further agree with 
me in regarding our own consciousness as the final court of 
appeal in regard to the truth (to each individual) of any proposition 
whatever—the base of verification to which all our logical tri- 
angulation must be worked back, if we desire to test its validity. 
But it does not follow that because a certain proposition is “un- 
thinkable” by Mr. Herbert Spencer, therefore it is “ unthinkable” 
by some one else, or by mankind in general: because any one 
who studies, not only his own mind, but the minds of others, must 
see that the acceptance of a proposition by any individual de- 
pends upon its fitting into some place in his “ fabric of thought;” 
and that, according to the plan on which that fabric has been built 
up, will be the shape and size of the recesses that will determine 
the suitableness or unsuitableness of new pieces of mental furni- 
ture.* Hence, if I can show that not only my own consciousness, 
but the common consciousness of Mankind, accepts and acts upon 
the doctrine (even when dissenting from it as a philosophical pro- 
position) that the Human Will is an independent or “ uncondi- 
tioned” factor in the direction of our mental and bodily activities 
(for I do not affirm more), this doctrine is not disproved by the 
fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “ fabric of thought” has not at the 
present time a place for its admission. 
The question of the existence or non-existence of such a power 
in the human Ego, is quite distinct from the question of how it has 
come to be there ; and hence, whilst following with great interest 
and admiration the general outlines (the details I do not pro- 
fess to have mastered) of Mr. Herbert Spencer's application of the 
evolution-doctrine to the study of Psychology,! I do not see that 
* See my Lecture on the “Psychology of Belief” in Contemporary Review for 
December, 1874.—It is to mo not a little singular that the advocates of the doctrine of 
Human Automatism should advance their doctrine with such calm confidence of its being 
the only one that a scientifically trained mind can possibly entertain ; when, as will bo 
presently shown, it can only be reconciled with a vast body of facts which rank among 
the most certain of human experiences, by assumptions of which there is no proof 
whatever. 
f As I find that a note to my former paper has been understood in a sense I by no means 
intended, I wish to take this opportunity of stating that when I spoke of “ the idea of 948 
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
in discussing the former there is any need to concern ourselves 
with the latter. Supposing the evolution-doctrine to be histori- 
cally true, the superinduction of conscious upon unconscious ex- 
istence is a phenomenon quite as incomprehensible—i.e. involving 
quite as great a departure from the previous succession—as the 
first introduction of a self-determining power; of the evolution of 
which, on a graduated scale, from very small beginnings to its 
highest development, I maintain that we have evidence in the 
growth of every well-trained child, as we also have in the passage 
from the uncontrolled automatism of the lowest savage, to the 
disciplined self-control of the man who has most completely attained 
the highest of all powers, that of ruling his own spirit. And we 
who affirm its existence, have quite as good a right to assert that 
we recognize its presence by our own immediate experience, as 
Mr. Herbert Spencer has to assert that its existence is “ unthink- 
able.” 
Moreover, I fail to see that its admission is so inconsistent 
as Mr. Herbert Spencer affirms it to be, with the possibility of a 
scientific Psychology:—“ To reduce the general question to its 
simplest form,” he says (“ Principles of Psychology,” § 220), “ psy- 
chical changes either conform to law, or they do not. If they do 
not conform to law, this work, in common with all works on the 
subject, is sheer nonsense : no science of psychology is possible. 
If they do conform to law, there cannot be such a thing as free- 
will.” For the study of the relations which he regards as the sub- 
ject-matter of that science, would not be prejudiced in any way by 
the introduction of a factor which lies outside those relations. 
That there are certain uniformities of human action, which furnish 
the basis of our whole social fabric, and are the legitimate objects 
of scientific inquiry, is admitted by every one; and it is the 
object of psychological science to trace out the causal relations 
of these phenomena, so as to determine in what measures they 
are to be attributed to inherited constitution, to the early training 
imparted by others, and to the influence of the “ environments” 
generally. But, on the other hand, every one also admits that the 
closest observation of these uniformities, and the most sagacious 
analysis of their conditions, does not justify anything more than a 
“forecast” of the course of human action, whether of individuals 
progressive differentiation, especially in regard to the structure and actions of the nervous 
system ” as “ perfectly familiar to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s predecessors in the same line of 
inquiry,” I used the word “ progressive ” in the limited sense which it hears in the 
following passage from the third edition (1851), p. 584, of my “ Principles of General 
and Comparative Physiology:”—“Now, the great principle of progression from the more 
general to the more special, appears to hold good as well in regard to the functional 
character of organs, as with respect to their structural and developmental conformity ; as 
may be seen in proceeding from the lower to the higher forms of organized being, and 
in following the successive stages of development of any one of the higher organisms.” 
I had no idea of disputing Mr. Herbert Spencer’s claim to priority in the application of 
this doctrine to genetic succession. ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
949 
or of communities, in any given contingency. “ Who would have 
thought that he would have done such a thing1?” is our frequent 
exclamation in regard to some one of whom we considered that we 
had a most intimate knowledge : that “ the unexpected is what 
always happens” has passed into a proverb, since what seemed 
the tranquil course of political events was first disturbed by the 
rupture between France and Germany. It is, of course, open for 
the automatist to say that the element of uncertainty here arises, 
as in the case of weather-forecasts, from the complexity of the 
conditions, and from our imperfect acquaintance with them ; and 
he might fairly urge, on general grounds, that if we could grasp 
the whole of the antecedents, and measure the potency of each, no 
“ unconditioned” or self-originating element would be found to 
have interfered with the regular sequence of cause and effect. 
But this is just the point in dispute. The whole history of science 
shows the importance of investigating “residual phenomena;” 
and until the automatists have proved that no such exist in the 
science of human action, they have nothing but a general proba- 
bility, drawn from the entirely different sphere of Physical science, 
to oppose to what Mr. H. Sidgwick designates as “ the immediate 
affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate volition,” 
“ which makes it,” he continues, “ impossible for me to think, at 
such a moment, that my volition is completely determined by my 
formed character, and the motives acting upon it.” And while the 
misperceptions or erroneous intuitions which occur in the exercise 
of our senses, come to be corrected, as Mr. Sidgwick remarks, 
by that comparison of experiences which affords the only sound 
basis of our belief in objective realities of any kind whatever, “ no 
amount of experience in the sway of motives even tends to make 
me distrust my intuitive consciousness, that, in resolving, after 
deliberation, I exercise, free choice as to which of the motives acting 
upon me shall prevail.”* 
Here, then, is the gist of the whole controversy. The “ motives” 
in any particular case may be taken as so many forces arising out 
of antecedent “ circumstances ;” and it may be freely admitted on 
both sides that the relative amounts of these would be calculable 
if we knew and could estimate all these circumstances,—including, 
of course, the formed character of the individual. But, since 
we have no such test, the assertion that “the strongest motive 
prevails” is a mere truism; being only another form of saying 
that the motive which prevails is the strongest. If we put into a 
balance two bodies of known densities, we can predict, by the 
comparison of their dimensions, which will preponderate ; but if 
the density of one or both is unknown, we can only determine 
which is the heavier by seeing which scale goes down. And so. 
* “ The Methods of Ethic,” p. 51. 950 
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
in the determination of our own conduct as to matters of such a 
nature as not to involve considerations of duty or even of 
prudence,—when, for example, we have to choose between two 
or more objects, each simply pleasurable,—our only test of the 
relative strength of their attractions is furnished by the gravitation 
of our minds towards one or other of them. And the same is the 
case in regard to any morally indifferent action, towards which we 
feel ourselves drawn by one set of attractions, and from which we 
feel ourselves kept away by another. The first motive, in the 
absence of the second, would determine the action of the Ego ; the 
second, in the absence of the first, would determine his inaction ; 
and in general we have no other test of the relative strength of 
the attracting and the repelling forces, than the resultant mental 
preponderance of one over the other. 
For want of such tests, indeed, we are constantly obliged to 
proceed experimentally, as in the training either of a dog, or of a 
young child that is (save in respect of language) very much in 
the dog-stage of intellectual and moral capacity. A certain 
dainty, for example, presents a strong attraction, urging the 
subject of that attraction to possess himself of it; the master or 
parent, on the other hand, desires to deter the dog or the child 
from this appropriation, and takes means to signify his disapproval 
of it. But if, on the recurrence of the temptation, the attraction 
proves too strong for the deterrent motive, and the act is repeated, 
punishment is inflicted to add to the strength of the deterrent; 
the association being made as strong as possible between the act 
and its painful consequence, in order that the offender may be led 
to apprehend a recurrence of the pain as a consequence of a 
repetition of the offence. The next repetition of the act brings 
on the culprit a still severer chastisement; and so we proceed 
until we have found a deterrent force that effectually counteracts 
the attractive force. The deterrent will derive additional power, 
in the case of a dog or a child that is capable of strong personal 
attachment, from the manifestation of displeasure which it calls 
forth on the part of the master or parent; and there are cases in 
which the desire to avoid giving pain to a being that is loved 
with all the strength of dog- or of child-nature, seems even more 
potent than the apprehension either of corporeal suffering or of the 
deprivation of some valued enjoyment. But this again can only 
be learned experimentally in each individual case; the character 
of the particular dog or child, as shown in its general course of 
action, only affording a probable indication as to the kind of 
deterrent which will prove most effectual. 
Now, in the whole of this process I recognize, as fully as my 
opponents can do, the automatism of the nature which we are 
endeavouring to mould; and I believe that in the education of ON TIIE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
951 
young children too much of self-regulation is often expected, and 
a great deal set down to wilful obstinacy, which is in reality the 
result of a want of power to act otherwise than automatically. 
How far a dog ever rises to the state of so as to 
be able to reflect upon his own mental states, and to regulate their 
intensity and succession, is a question which we have no certain 
means of determining. He may be capable of the most dis- 
interested self-sacrifice, under the influence either of the strong 
sense of duty to his master, which leads him to make the most 
laborious exertions to fulfil his behests with a sagacity which is 
often truly marvellous, or of the almost passionate attachment 
which in some instances appears to dominate over every other 
motive,—as when a dog cannot be induced, even by the cravings 
of hunger, to desert his master’s grave. But if, as seems to me 
most likely, such self-sacrifice is simply the result of a preponder- 
ance of present motives, involving neither calculation of future 
consequences, nor a deliberate preference of duty—as duty— 
over pleasure or interest, it does not seem to me to deserve the 
moral approval we give to such an act of deliberate self-sacrifice 
as that of the heroic steersman of the burning steamer, who kept 
his post while the fire beneath was roasting the soles of his feet 
(thereby laming himself for life), in order that, by guiding the ship 
to shore, he might save the lives of all on board. 
In the education of a child, on the other hand, we watch for 
the dawn of this power of reflection and deliberation; we en- 
deavour to strengthen his feeble resolution by judicious en- 
couragement, and to give additional force to his sense of duty by 
earnest appeals to it, so as to sustain him in a conflict to which 
he is as yet unequal, if left to himself; but we lead him to feel 
that he must not always expect such help, and that it rests with 
himself, by habitual action upon what his reason and his moral 
sense tell him he ought to do, to gain the power to do it against his 
inclination. 
Of course it will be replied by the automatist, that all such 
“ training” is part of the external influences which go to the 
formation of the character; and that its efficacy depends upon 
the degree in which the sense of duty can be thus developed by 
judicious culture into efficient predominance. But I affirm it to 
be a matter of notorious experience, that it is the reiteration of 
the assurance that the child can govern his temper, if he tries 
hard enough; that he can overcome a difficulty, if he will summon 
courage to make a vigorous effort; that he can choose and act 
upon the right, in spite of strong temptation to do the wrong, if 
he will steadily keep before himself the determination not to 
yield,—which constitutes the most effectual means of calling forth 
that power of “ self control,” which the most enlightened writers 952 
THE CONTEMPORARY REV JEW. 
of antiquity, and the most successful of modem educators, concur 
in regarding as the most valuable result, alike of moral and intel- 
lectual discipline. I find myself quite unable to attach a definite 
import to such words as continentia, or temperantia—to 
see any meaning in the ancient proverb that “ he that is slow to 
anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruletli his spirit than 
he that taketh a city,” or to feel any admiration for a hero who 
“ has gained that greatest of all victories, the victory over him- 
self,” if the course of action results from no other agency than 
either physical or mental Automatism, and no independent power 
be put forth by the Ego in determining it. And if I felt obliged 
to accept that doctrine as scientific truth, I should look to its 
honest and consistent application to the training of the young as 
the greatest of social calamities. For I can imagine nothing 
more paralyzing to every virtuous effort, more withering to every 
noble aspiration, than that our children should be brought up in 
the belief that their characters are entirely formed for them by 
heredity and environments; that they must do whatever their 
respective characters impel them to do ; that they have no other 
power of resisting temptations to evil, than such as may spon- 
taneously arise from the knowledge they have acquired of what 
they ought or ought not to do; that if this motive proves too 
weak, they can do nothing of themselves to intensify and 
strengthen it; that the notion of “ summoning their resolution,” 
or “bracing themselves for the conflict,” is altogether a delu- 
sion; that, in fine, they are in the position of a man who is 
floating down-stream in a boat without oars, towards a danger- 
ous cataract, and can only be rescued by the interposition of 
some Beus ex machina.* How the perception of this as the logical 
outcome of the doctrine of Automatism, weighed “ like an in- 
cubus” upon the spirit of John Stuart Mill, when he first fully 
awoke to it, he has himself told us in his Autobiography. “ I 
felt,” he says, “ as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless 
slave of antecedent circumstances ; as if my character and that of 
all others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, 
and was wholly out of our own power.” And it is not a little 
curious that, while continuing to advocate as scientific truth the 
determination of human conduct by the formed character of each 
* My serious warning has been anticipated by the Paterfamilias who thus humour- 
ously put the same issue to the Spectator. a few months ago :—“ It is now well known,” 
says M. Taine, “ that vice and virtue are products exactly like sugar and vitriol, and 
we may hope to know in time the laws by which they are produced. When science has 
clearly established those laws, it will he as irrational to feel indignation at base and 
cowardly actions, as it would be to feel angry about the chemical affinities. A clearer 
insight into the laws of Nature will rid us, I am assured, of the very disagreeable feel- 
ings of regret and remorse. But I find it very difficult to conceive of a society from 
which science has eliminated all idea of responsibility; and still more difficult to under- 
stand how the modern ideas can _ be taught to the young in our schools without fatally 
weakening every youthful effort.” ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
953 
individual, and while excluding any interference, at the final 
stage, with the strict sequence of cause and effect, he seems to 
have admitted the independence or unconditioned agency of the 
Ego in the formation of his character. “ I saw,” he says, “ that 
though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires 
can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is 
really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the 
conviction that we have real power over the formation of our oivn 
character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, 
can modify our future habits and capacities of willing.” 
I can attach no other meaning to this remarkable passage, the 
teaching of which is more fully developed in chap. 1. of Book vi. of 
the “System of Logic,” than that it recognizes a factor in the forma- 
tion of our characters, which is something else than “ heredity plus 
environments.” For I can scarcely suppose J. S. Mill not to have 
seen that if a man’s desires are themselves the resultants of ante- 
cedent “ circumstances,” the incubus of hopeless slavery to those 
circumstances can no more be removed by any desires for self- 
improvement which ex hypothesi arise out of them, than a weight 
which bears down on a man’s shoulders can be lifted off by its own 
pressure. Any one who reads in De Quincey’s “ Confessions” 
the graphic narrative of Ins miserable experiences from the abuse 
of opium, will see how ineffectual are the strongest desires without 
the will to carry them into effect. And I shall now try to show 
that our “ capacity of willing,” that is, of giving a preponderation 
to the motive on which we elect to act, depends, first, upon our 
conviction that we really have such a self-determining power, 
and, secondly, upon our habitual exercise of it. 
The analysis of an actual case, that is, unfortunately, but too 
common—that of a man who habitually gives way to the desire 
for alcholic excitement, and is ruining himself and his family by 
his self-abandonment—will bring into distinct view the practical 
bearing of the antagonistic doctrines. In that stage at which 
the toper first begins to feel that his propensity is acquiring the 
mastery over him, he may be susceptible of the strongest motives 
to liberate himself; such as the welfare of a wife and family, to whom 
he maybe sincerely attached; the consciousness that he is degrading 
himself, alike in his own estimation, and in that of others; the 
prospect of inevitable ruin if he does not free himself from the 
trammels whose tenacity he feels to be daily augmenting : 
but he wants the will to make the effort. His friends reason 
with him, and he assents to everything they say; he makes the 
best possible resolutions to resist the temptation, and may even 
have enough self-command to keep himself out the way of it; but 
in an evil hour he accidentally meets some one in whose 
company he has been accustomed to the pleasurable indul- THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
954 
gence; the attraction of the immediate gratification prevails 
over the prospect of future suffering to himself and those he 
loves; his good resolutions melt away like snow before the 
sun ; and he adds one more to the melancholy list of victims to 
this terrible fascination. Now, since, on the Automatist theory, he 
cannot help yielding, he ought to incur no moral reprobation for 
doing so. He says to himself and to others, “ I could not help it; ” 
and society has a right to say to him, as the master says to his 
dog, “ Then we must give you an additional motive to help it, by 
punishing you every time that you give way to the temptation.” 
But the F ree-will advocate says to him, “ You know perfectly well 
that you could have helped it, in that earlier stage in which you felt 
perfectly free to choose between drinking and not drinking, and 
unthinkingly preferred the former. If a picture of the wretched- 
ness you are now bringing upon others, the slavish degradation to 
Avhich you are reducing yourself, had then been placed before you, 
you woidd either have recoiled from it with horror, or have refused 
to believe in its truth; for you would have said that you would 
certainly have pulled yourself up before you had fallen so low. 
But you have allowed yourself to sink, little by little ; and you will 
find it far more difficult now to break away, than it would have 
been at first. But it is not yet too late. The struggle will be 
severe; but you can conquer if you icill. And it rests with yourself 
to will. You have every possible motive of the highest kind on 
the one side, and nothing but the attraction of a selfish indulgence 
on the other. Be a man, and not a beast. Exert the power which 
you know and feel yourself to possess; keep your thoughts and 
affections steadily fixed upon the right; avoid the first step in the 
downward path ; and when the moment of unexpected temptation 
comes, make a vigorous effort, determine to succeed, and you will 
come off victorious. And when you have once done so, you will 
feel a more assured conviction that you can do so again ; each 
victory will make the next easier to you; and, by steady perse- 
verance, you will re-acquire that power of self-direction which will 
enable you to keep straight without an effort.” 
I appeal to the experience of those who have had to deal with 
these sad cases, whether the latter is not practically the more 
effective. 
When the patient can thus work out his own cure, he gradually 
recovers the volitional power, which had been weakened not 
merely by the habit of giving way, but by the specific effect 
of the alcohol (which it shares with other “ nervine stimulants ”) 
upon his physical organization; and he comes at last to find the 
aggregate of moral deterrents spontaneously preponderating over 
the sensual attraction, instead of needing the intensification which 
they derive from the determinate fixation of the attention upon them. ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
955 
A cure thus effected obviously has a much better chance of per- 
manence, than any that could have been brought about by such 
external coercion as we use in the case of a dog or a young child. 
For this loses all potency as soon as its pressure is removed; 
whilst the re-acquirement of self-mastery gives to all the better 
part of the nature that legitimate predominance which it was well 
nigh losing, and enables it to assert itself whenever the occasion 
may arise. 
The case appears to me to stand thus:—The Automatism of our 
nature (purely physical so far as the craving for alcohol is concerned, 
but including, in most cases, some play of social instincts) furnishes 
an aggregate of powerful attractions to the present gratification. 
On the other side is an aggregate of deterrents, which, when the 
the attention is fixed upon them in the absence of the attractive 
object, have a decided preponderance, so far as the desires are 
concerned. The slave of intemperance is often ready to cry out, 
“ 0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death % ”—and he proves his sincerity by his readiness to 
take every indirect precaution that does not interfere with his 
personal liberty. But when the temptation recurs, the force of 
the attraction is intensified by its actual presence; the direct 
sensory presentation makes a more vivid impression than the ideal 
representation of the deterrent motives; and the balance, which 
previously turned against the indulgence, now preponderates in 
favour of it. What, then, is it within the power of the Ego to do 1 
On the automatist theory, nothing. For not only is he unable to call 
to his aid any motive which does not spontaneously arise, but he 
cannot make any alteration in the relative strength of the motives 
which are actually present to his consciousness. I affirm it, on 
the other hand, to be “the normal experience of healthy men,” 
that we have the power of intensifying the motives which we 
know and feel ought to prevail, and of proportionally weakening 
the force of those Avliich we know ought not to prevail; and that 
this power is exactly of the same kind as that by which we are 
continually enforcing our attention to a subject on which we 
desire to fix our thoughts, in spite of the counter-attraction which, 
without such effort, would draw them off to something else. If 
it be urged by the automatist that the persistence of our attention 
is really due to the superior strength of the motive which leads 
us to desire to do so, I reply that no experience I am conscious 
of is more real to me, than that if I did not make an effort to maintain 
my attention, the desire alone would fail to do it. I am further 
conscious that a great deal more is “ taken out of me ” (if I may 
use so colloquial an expression) by the prolongation of such a 
struggle, than by a far larger measure of continuous undistracted 
thought. And I ask why, on the Automatist theory, this should be 1 THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
956 
In the wonderful experiment recently exhibited by Mr. Crookes 
(p. 945, note), the mechanical agencies of light and heat can be 
brought into mutual antagonism; for the wheel, which is being 
rapidly driven round by the action of the light of a neighbouring 
candle upon the black side of the discs it carries, is soon brought 
to a stand when one side of the glass globe that encloses it is 
heated with a spirit lamp; while its motion is renewed, the candle 
remaining where it was, as soon as the glass cools. This prepon- 
derance of one or the other force according to conditions purely 
physical, affords, on the determinist doctrine, a true scientific 
analogue of our own action. If the wheel could feel, and 
could tell us its feelings, it would say—“ I was conscious of a 
force which drove me round in one direction, and I then became 
conscious of a stronger force, which overcame the first, and 
brought my rotation to a stand; but I had no more power over 
my own motion, than the aeronaut has when his balloon is spinning 
round on its axis.” 
Now, I submit that the Common Sense of mankind (by which, as 
I have explained on a former occasion, I mean the general resultant 
of its experiences) gives a very different account of the matter. 
Whatever allowances it may be ready to make for individual 
cases—such, for instance, as that of Hartley Coleridge, who was 
the victim of a strong hereditary predisposition, accompanied by 
a constitutional weakness of will—it recognizes as a fixed con- 
viction, and consistently acts upon that conviction, that the 
incipient drunkard has a power over himself: that he can not only 
abstain if he chooses, but that he can choose to abstain, because 
he knows that he ought to do so ; and that when, by voluntarily 
giving way to his propensity, he brings himself into a condition 
in which he is no more responsible for his actions than a lunatic, 
he is not thereby exempted from the penalty that may attach to 
them, but must be held responsible for having knowingly and 
deliberately brought himself into the condition of irresponsibility. 
On the Automatist theory, a drunkard who deserts a comfortable 
home for the tap-room (I make large allowance for those who 
have 'uncomfortable homes), who neglects an attached wife and 
loving children for the society of profligates, and who, with 
ample means of higher enjoyment, surrenders himself without a 
struggle to the allurements of sensual pleasure, and at last ren- 
ders himself amenable to the law by fatal outrage on the patient 
wife who has long borne with his brutality, is no more a sub- 
ject of moral reprobation than poor Hartley Coleridge ; who, when 
he strayed from the loving care of his friends, would be found in 
the parlour of some rural public-house, delighting the rustics ’with 
his wonderful stories, and indulging to his heart’s content in the 
unlimited beer which the publican was only too glad to allow him. ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
957 
Wlien, on the other hand, the subject of a strong hereditary alcoholic 
craving maintains a daily conflict with his tempter, uses every 
means he can think of to avoid or weaken its seductions, and 
puts forth all his energy in resisting them, and, through occasional 
failures, comes otf on the whole victorious, the Automatist can 
have no other approbation to bestow upon him than that which 
he would accord to a self-governing steam-engine, or a compen- 
sation-balance watch, each of which machines does merely that 
which its construction fits it for, and is no more meritorious for 
working “ right,” than a steam-engine without a governor, or a 
watch without a compensation-balance, is blamable for going 
“ wrong.” The welfare of that aggregate of automata which we 
call society, may require that every individual automaton shall be 
prevented from doing what is injurious to it; and punishment for 
offences actually committed may be reasonably inflicted as a 
deterrent from the repetition of such offences by the individual or 
by others. But it is a mistake to suppose that “ right ” means any- 
thing else than what is for the common benefit, or that “ wrong ” 
implies anything more than a something which tends to the 
general disadvantage. And all our aim will be, to bring the 
mechanism of each individual automaton, and the whole social 
machine, into the smooth and harmonious action which wo 
witness in a hive of bees, in which each individual seems 
impelled to do that, and that only, which contributes to the 
well-being of the community at large; while in the prosecution of 
this aim we have ourselves no voice whatever; since we are 
nothing but “parts of the great series of causes and effects, 
which, in unbroken continuity, composes that which is, and has 
been, and shall be—the sum of existence.” 
Into such high philosophy I do not care to enter. It is like the 
“ lunar politics ” of Professor Huxley—a matter above, if not ab- 
solutely beyond, my ken; but that I have (1) a conscience, which 
recognizes a distinction between right and wrong, (2) a sense 
of duty, which prompts me to do the right and to avoid the 
wrong (what is right and what is wrong being a matter of 
individual judgment, in the formation of which there are 
a great many factors), and (3) a power, within certain limits, 
of willing that which I know I ought to do, are to mo primal 
facts of consciousness, which are in themselves mutually 
coherent, which are consistent with all my own experiences, and 
which I believe to be accepted, by mankind in general, whatever 
philosophers may say to the contrary. For the recognition of 
those facts seems to me to be evidenced by the universal use of 
terms whose accepted meaning must be altogether changed, if 
they do not imply the existence of a choice that is determined 
by the individual, and not for him; and it is not a little curious 958 
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
to see how constantly even determinists make use of this lan- 
guage. I fully admit that in the act of deliberation which pre- 
cedes the final choice and the action taken upon it, the motives 
are, in the first instance, entirely supplied by the automatism ; and 
I also fully recognize the fact that the will can add nothing to 
the physical force which the automatism is capable of exerting. 
But my contention is that by fixing the attention on the probable con- 
sequences of the act, the will can modify the relative strength of the 
motives already present, and can call up new ones,—thus deter- 
mining the action of that force; and I shall now suggest what seems 
to me the nearest approach that Physiology can at present furnish 
to a rationale of this determination. 
The brain-change, which is admitted on all hands to be the con- 
dition of all interaction between the Ego and the external world, 
is itself conditioned by the supply of blood it receives ; and that 
blood serves the double purpose of supplying by its nutritive 
material the potential energy, or capacity for functional activity, of 
every part of the mechanism, and of changing that potential into 
actual energy, by the destructive oxygenation of certain com- 
ponents of the brain-substance. For this latter purpose, a far larger 
supply of blood is needed than for the former : such a reduction 
of the calibre of the vessels as takes place during profound sleep, 
for example, suspends all active exercise of brain-power, and yet 
is consistent with that renovation of the exhausted organ which 
renders it capable of new activity; just as when, after the discharge 
of a powerful Leyden battery, it is re-charged by the continued 
turning of the machine-handle. Now, the control exercised over the 
calibre of the vessels of every part of the body, and consequently 
over the quantity of the blood they carry, by the nerves that 
ramify upon their muscular walls, is one of the most important 
facts established by modern physiological research; the pheno- 
menon of “ blushing,” which was formerly regarded as exceptional, 
being now accepted as the visible type of a vast order of changes 
secretly going on in the penetralia of the system, which give 
physical expression to various states of mental feeling. Thus 
the nursing mother experiences a rush of blood to her breast, 
when her feelings are moved by hearing the cry of her babe, or 
even by the thought of its need. And the recent experiments of 
Dr. Ferrier have proved by ocular demonstration—what was ante- 
cedently probable on other grounds—that a great dilatation of 
the blood-vessels may take place in a certain limited part of the 
brain ; and they further seem to me to indicate that a state of 
nervous tension may be induced by this hypercvmia, which rises to 
the degree of discharging itself in the special action of the part. 
If this be the case, the functional activity of any particular seg- 
ment of the brain—one segment ministering to purely intellectual ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
959 
operations, another to emotional conditions, another to the ex- 
pression of mental states in bodily action ; each of these segments 
again, consisting of vast numbers of components, groups of cells 
and fibres, which may act separately or in any variety of com- 
binations—being determined by the supply of blood it receives, 
will depend upon the regulation of the calibre of its vessels by 
the vaso-motor nerves. And thus, whilst the whole amount of 
actual energy that can be put forth, whether in mental or mus- 
cular activity, is limited by the capacity of the mechanism and the 
amount of potential energy furnished by the blood-supply, the 
direction of that energy, its manifestation in one form of action 
rather than another, is determined by the influence exerted by the 
Ego upon the vaso-motor system of nerves. If, as all recent phy- 
siological inquiry seems to render probable, the desire to do a 
particular action is the mental expression of an active state of 
certain “ ideational molecules,” the desire may, on the other hand, 
be intensified by the determinate direction of our attention to the 
object, which increases the supply of blood; whilst, on the other 
hand, it may be weakened by the transfer of the attention to some 
different object, which, by augmenting the supply of blood to the 
part that ministers to the latter, diminishes that which previously 
flowed towards the seat of the former activity. Such changes, as 
Sir Henry Holland showed (in his valuable essay on the effect of 
Attention on bodily organs), have their parallels elsewhere. It is 
thus, as it seems to me, that we are able to fix our attention upon an 
internal train of thought (depending upon cerebral activity), to the 
exclusion of impressions that come to us through our external senses; 
the relative activity of what we may call the upper or the lower 
strata of the sensorium being determined by the supply of blood 
these strata respectively receive. It is thus, again, that we fix our 
attention upon one train of thought, one state of feeling, or one 
object of sense, to the exclusion of another of the same kind. And 
it is thus, in fine, that we call into activity the mechanism that 
expresses those thoughts or feelings in movement, or that we can 
repress tendency to that activity by our own determinate effort. 
It may be replied by the Automatist, “ I grant you all this; the 
will may act, as you say, through the vaso-motor system of nerves ; 
but the will is itself conditioned by antecedent circumstances, and 
your rationale only carries us back a step further in the physiology 
of its exercise.” This I fully admit; but at the same time I 
maintain that the view I have endeavoured to expound ac- 
counts for all those physiological facts which have been ad- 
vanced to prove the automatism, pure and simple, of the bodily 
mechanism; by attributing to the will, not the creation, but 
the distribution of force, and thus giving it the power of regulat- 
ing instead of producing the activity of the automatism. And 960 
TIIE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
I find tlic evidence of this regulative power in that which is to 
myself the most real because the most immediate of my ex- 
periences, namely, my own Moral as well as Intellectual conscious- 
ness ; in my conviction—not that I can always do what I choose 
to do (for this I am painfully conscious that in many instances I 
cannot)—but that I can choose to do what I feel I ought to do, in 
spite of a strong preponderance of attraction to the opposite ; 
and that, in proportion to the power I have gained over my 
automatism by the habit of self-direction, in so far as my dme has 
trained my bete to obey its behests, in that proportion I am 
able, and therefore morally free, to do it. In proportion, on 
the other hand, as I habitually allow my bete to carry my dme 
where it likes, I find that I lose the power of making it go my 
own way; the automatic succession of thoughts and feelings 
assumes the predominance ; and nothing but vigorous and per- 
sistent effort will enable the dme to succeed in recovering its 
former command. And while I affirm my own personal experience 
to be as trustworthy as that of others who declare themselves 
destitute of any power but that which conscious automata can 
exert, I can appeal to the common consciousness of Mankind in 
support of my position; whilst that of my opponents is sustained 
only by a philosophic creed, which, professing to be based on 
universal experience, excludes one large and most important 
department of experience. 
The importance of the habit of self-direction in comparatively 
unimportant matters, as the key alike to intellectual attainment 
and to moral control, and as the means of acquiring the power of 
self-direction in those great crises of life in which its possession 
or its want proves our salvation or our ruin, can scarcely be over- 
estimated. We see the results of its deficiency in those abnormal 
states, in which either its non-development or its suspension 
really makes the individual a thinking automaton, who can not be 
regarded as responsible for his acts. And hence, if it has a real 
existence, and is within the scope of human attainment, it 
should be the primal object of all education. As Dr. J. D. Morell 
has well said— 
“ Theory and doctrine, and inculcation of laws and propositions, \vill never 
of themselves lead to the uniform habit of right action, ft is by doing, 
that we learn to do ; by overcoming, that we learn to overcome ; by obey- 
ing reason and conscience, that we learn to obey; and every right act which 
we cause to spring out of pure principles, whether by authority, precept, or 
example, will have a greater weight in the formation of character than all 
the theory in the world.”—Outlines of Mental Philosophy, p. 374. 
With this one other consideration I will bring my argument 
to a conclusion. Agreeing as I do with my opponents, that the 
brain shapes itself in accordance with the use which is habit- ON THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 
961 
ually made of it, and that its Automatic action furnishes the 
motives which prompt the conduct, the function of the Will 
being to determine it,—I am all the more led to recognize 
the importance of those early influences, which lay a foundation 
for the good or the evil of our whole subsequent lives. Part 
of that training comes to us from others, and for that it is 
our parents and teachers who are responsible; but the most 
effective part of it is that which we give to ourselves, when 
we choose what use we shall make of our opportunities, form our 
own habits of thought, and settle our own principles of action. 
It is then thaf we sow what will come up either as a harvest 
of wholesome nourishment to the spiritual part of our nature, or 
as a growth of noxious weeds which inflame the “ fleshly lusts that 
war against the soul.” And it is then that we lay up in our 
inner chambers those accumulations of good or evil tendencies 
which shape our future course in life; helping us, as with the 
hand of an Angel whom we have entertained unawares, when we 
are earnestly striving to “ turn to the right and keep straight on 
or dragging us downward, as with the grasp of a Nemesis, towards 
the lowest depths of selfishness and sensuality, when we have 
knowingly allowed ourselves to take the first steps in the facilis 
descensus Averni. 
Addendum. 
[It is with much satisfaction that I find the views above ex- 
pressed to be in complete accordance with those which have 
been developed in- the “ Psychologie Naturelle ” of M. Prosper 
Despine,—a laborious and able study from nature of the mental 
mechanism of crime. Admitting the doctrine of Automatism as 
the spring of by far the larger part of human action, and limiting 
the agency of the Will to those cases which are distinguished by 
the sense of effort that marks the struggle between the wrong 
desire and the sense of duty, the self-approval which follows 
success, and the self-reproach which ensues upon a failure to 
do what we feel that we might and ought to have done, 
M. Despine looks upon a very large proportion of Criminals as 
“ moral idiots,” devoid of the ordinary moral instincts ; affirming 
that they have no struggle beforehand, except that of purely 
selfish motives, that they have no true remorse for their guilt, and 
that their apparent repentance is nothing but fear of the future 
suffering with which they are threatened. But none the less does 
he recognize the possession by the normal Man of a self-deter- 
mining power, which he considers himself to have demonstrated THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 
962 
by the investigations ‘which have shown the consequences of its 
deficiency. And Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, to whose recent notice 
of M. Despine’s work I am indebted for this statement of his con- 
clusions, remarks that “ even if the destructive analysis of our new 
schoolmen threatens to distil away all we once called self-deter- 
mination and free-will, leaving only a caput mortuurn of animal sub- 
stance and ‘ strongest motive,’ we need not be greatly alarmed. For 
the belief in a power of self-determination, and the idea of possible 
future remorse connected with it, will still remain with all but the 
moral incapables—and the Metaphysicians; and this belief can 
be effectively appealed to, and will furnish a ‘ strongest motive,’ 
readily enough in the greatest majority of cases.”] 
W. B. Carpenter.