“But though we may see reason to disagree with Descartes’ hypothesis, that brutes are unconscious machines, it does not follow that he was wrong in regarding them as automata. They may be more or less conscious sensitive automata; and the view that they are such conscious machines is that which is implicitly or explicitly adopted by most persons. When we speak of the actions of the lower animals being guided by instinct and not by reason, what we really mean is that though they feel as we do, yet their actions are the results of their physical organization. We believe, in short, that they are machines, one part of which (the nervous system) not only sets the rest in motion and co-ordinates its movements in relation with changes in surrounding bodies, but is provided with a special apparatus the function of which is the calling into existence of those states of consciousness which are termed sensations, emotions, and ideas.”
84. To say that they are “conscious automata” seems granting all that I demand; but there are two objectionable positions which the phrase conceals: first, that Consciousness is not a coefficient; and secondly, that Reflex Action is purely mechanical.
Professor Huxley nowhere, I think, establishes the distinction between Consciousness as a term for a special mode of Feeling, and Consciousness as the all-embracing term for sentient phenomena. His language always implies that an action performed unconsciously is performed mechanically; which may be acceptable if by unconsciously be meant insentiently. I hold that whether consciously or unconsciously performed, the action is equally vital and sentient. In the case he has cited of a soldier now living who is subject to periodic alternations of normal and abnormal states, in the latter states all the actions being said to be “unconscious,” we have only to read the account to recognize ample evidence of Sentience. Here is a descriptive passage:—
85. “His [the soldier’s in the abnormal state] movements remain free, and his expression calm, except for a contraction of the brow, an incessant movement of the eyeballs, and a chewing motion of the jaws. The eyes are wide open, and their pupils dilated. If the man happens to be in a place to which he is accustomed he walks about as usual; but if he is in a new place, or if obstacles are intentionally placed in his way, he stumbles against them, stops, and then feeling over the objects with his hands, passes on one side of them. He offers no resistance to any change of direction which may be impressed upon him, or to the forcible acceleration or retardation of his movements. He eats, drinks, smokes, walks about, dresses and undresses himself, rises and goes to bed at the accustomed hours. Nevertheless pins may be run into his body, or strong electric shocks sent through it, without causing the least indication of pain; no odorous substance, pleasant or unpleasant, makes the least impression; he eats and drinks with avidity whatever is offered, and takes asafœtida or vinegar of quinine as readily as water; no noise affects him; and light influences him only under certain conditions.”
There is no one of these phenomena that is unfamiliar to students of mental disease. The case is chiefly remarkable from the periodicity of the recurrence of the abnormal state. I have collected other cases of the kind, and may hereafter find a fitting occasion to quote them.[224] The anæsthesia and “unconsciousness” noted, no more prove the actions performed by this soldier to have been purely mechanical, i. e. undetermined by sensation, than anæsthesia and unconsciousness prove somnambulists and madmen to be machines. In the pathological state called “ecstasy” there is a considerable diminution of sensibility to external stimuli; with a concentration on certain feelings, images, trains of thought, exhibiting itself in expressions of emotion. “Les malades,” says a master, “paraissent entièrement absorbés par leurs mouvements intérieurs, ils refusent généralement de manger, et spécialement la volonté de l’âme semble complètement enchainée.”[225]
86. Observe that while this soldier exhibits such insensibility to certain stimuli, he unequivocally exhibits sensibility to other stimuli. All his acts show sense-guidance. Sight and Touch obviously regulate his movements. And when he feels objects placed in his way, and then passes beside them, wherein does this differ from the normal procedure of sensitive organisms? wherein does it resemble automata? Dr. Mesmet—from whose narrative the case is cited—remarks that the sense of Touch seems to persist “and indeed to be more acute and delicate than in the normal state”; upon which Professor Huxley has this comment:—“Here a difficulty arises. It is clear from the facts detailed that the nervous apparatus by which in the normal state sensations of touch are excited is that by which external influences determine the movements of the body in the abnormal state. But does the state of consciousness, which we term a tactile sensation, accompany the operation of this nervous apparatus in the abnormal state? or is consciousness utterly absent, the man being reduced to a pure mechanism? It is impossible to obtain direct evidence in favor of the one conclusion or the other; all that can be said is that the case of the frog shows that the man may be devoid of any kind of consciousness.”
87. It is here we are made vividly aware of the absolute need there is to disengage the terms employed from their common ambiguities. All the evidence of a tactile sensation which can possibly be furnished, on the objective side, is furnished by the actions of this soldier; to doubt it would be to throw a doubt on the sensibility of any animal unable to tell us what it felt; nay, even a man if he were dumb, or spoke a language we could not understand, could give us no other proof. We conclude that the soldier had tactile sensations, because we see him guided by them as we ourselves are guided by tactile sensations; we know that he is an organism, not a machine, and therefore reject the inference that he has become reduced to a “pure mechanism” because it is inferred that his consciousness is absent. And on what is this inference grounded? 1°, The belief that the brain is the sole organ of consciousness (Sentience)—a belief flatly disproved by the facts, which show Sentience when the brain has been removed; and 2°, the belief that the decapitated frog, because it avoids obstacles and redirects its leaps to avoid them, does so without Sentience. According to the definition we adopt, we may either say that the decapitated frog, and the soldier in his abnormal state, act without consciousness, or with it. But what does not seem permissible is to deny that their actions exhibit the clearest evidence of sense-guidance, and the kind of volition which this sense-guidance implies; and this is quite enough to separate them from actions of automata. When a man ducks his head to avoid a stone which he sees falling towards him, he assuredly has a sensation, i. e. there is a grouping of neural elements, which subjectively is a sensation, and this originates a grouping of other neural elements, the outcome of which is a muscular movement, which subjectively is a motor sensation: this grouping would not have been originated unless the particular grouping had preceded it; nor would the simple retinal stimulus have excited this sensation unless the nerve-centres had been attuned to such response by many previous experiences: the ignorant child would not duck its head on seeing the stone approach. In our familiar use of the word Consciousness it would be correct to say that the man ducks his head “unconsciously”; and yet expressing the fact in psychological language, we also say: He ducks his head because remembering the pain of former similar experiences, he knows that if the stone strikes him he will again be hurt as before, therefore he wills to avoid it; expressing it in physiological language we may say: The man acts thus because he is so organized that a particular neural process is the stimulus of a particular central discharge; and he became thus organized through a long series of anterior adjustments responding to stimuli, each adjustment being the activity of the vital organism.
88. There can be no doubt that the soldier had perceptions, and that these perceptions guided his movements; whether these shall be called “states of consciousness” or not, is a question of terms. Now since we know that certain actions are uniformly consequent on certain perceptions, we are justified in inferring that whenever the actions are performed, the perceptions preceded them: this inference may be erroneous, but in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary it is that which claims our first assent. Is it evidence to the contrary that the perception may have stimulated the action, yet been unaccompanied by the special mode named consciousness? Not in the least. We learn to read with conscious effort; each letter has to be apprehended separately, its form distinguished from all other forms, its value as a sign definitely fixed, yet how very rarely are we “conscious” of the letters when we read a book? Each letter is perceived; and yet this process passes so rapidly and smoothly, that unless there be some defect in a letter, or the word be misspelled, we are not “conscious” of the perceptions. Are we therefore reading automata?[226]
We are said to walk unconsciously at times; and the continuance of the movement is said to be due to reflex action. But it is demonstrable that the cutaneous sensibility of the soles of the feet is a primary condition. If the skin be insensible, the walking becomes a stumble. In learning to walk, or dance, the child fixes his eyes on his feet, as he fixes them on his fingers in learning to play the piano. After a while these registered sensations connected with the muscular sense suffice to guide his feet or his fingers; but not if feet or fingers lose their sensibility.
89. With these explanations let us follow the further details of this soldier’s abnormal actions:—