James calls this a motor discharge, which we will admit, but he wavers when he says, "Why any state of consciousness should precede a movement we do not know." Then he adds, "The soul presents nothing herself and creates nothing."
Exterior Stimuli, he assumes, awakens the sinews, which in turn cause the body to act. Do not External Stimuli cause the vegetable to act! Go set your little geranium in the south window and see how soon it turns its pretty face to the sun. These acts may receive their origin in the law of inclination, permitted but not emitted, while every act of a sane animal is an exhibition of intention. Exterior Stimuli are individual causes. Intentional response is of invisible individual origin. Reflex action would be nothing but continued Exterior Stimuli.
The invisible actor is the man; see him out on the wings of the soul in the far away Eternity, weighing the stars, predicting their course, calculating their velocity and testing their elements.
See our Edison bottling up the lightning's wild vim and causing it, in its attempt to regain liberty, to serve man silently and safely. Would the Stimuli which cause Edison to invent cause any other man of the same experience and education to evolve the same results? Answer yes, and you expose your weakness. Answer no, and you establish the mysterious, invisible thinking soul.
Materialism is an educational attempt to compel the religious world to prove that which they do not profess to comprehend. Knowledge is the accumulation of past earthly experience. Send a weakling through college and he has obtained knowledge, but he is the same simple Simon.
Wisdom is innate; it consists of individual ability to comprehend. It is peculiar to each self, and cannot be obtained through experience or education.
According to James, self is the body, clothes and surroundings. According to Genesis it is the image of God. Is God an animal? Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: "God is spirit." Is Jesus authority? Man's body, wealth and surroundings are not even his, they are simply under his control for a season. Self is that strange quality which designates one person from another. Memory and self are closely connected. It may be that the soul possesses memory of experience in other worlds, which, like all absent memory, awaits recall.
Sleep represents a mysterious condition of the soul. When the veil of consciousness begins to vanish one enters a sphere which is not controlled by reason, but rather by emotion; which, in dreaming, is often very intense and dictates wildly.
The lower animals are possessed of a soul, but if they have a sense of right and wrong it is undeveloped, in fact, the connecting link between man and beast may be consciousness of wrong.