Are We Automata?

ARE WE AUTOMATA? First published in Mind, 4, 1-22. Everyone is now acquainted with the Conscious-Automaton-theory to which Prof. Huxley[1] gave such publicity in his Belfast address; which the late Mr. D. A. Spalding punctiliously made the pivot of all his book-notices in Nature; which Prof. Clifford fulminated as a dogma essential to salvation in a lecture on "Body and Mind"[2] but which found its earliest and ablest exposition in Mr. Hodgson's magnificent work, The Theory of Practice.[3] The theory maintains that in everything outward we are pure material machines. Feeling is a mere collateral product of our nervous processes, unable to react upon them any more than a shadow reacts on the steps of the traveller whom it accompanies. Inert, uninfluential, a simple passenger in the voyage of life, it is allowed to remain on board, but not to touch the helm or handle the rigging.