Are We Automata?

This, however, is an argumentum an hominem which need not detain us. The theory itself is an inevitable consequence of the extension of the notion of reflex action to the higher nerve-centres. Prof. Huxley starts from a decapitated frog which performs rational-seeming acts although probably it has no consciousness, and passing up to the hemispheres of man concludes that the rationality of their performances can owe nothing to the feelings that co-exist with it. This is the inverse of Mr. Lewes's procedure. He starts from the hemispheres, and finding their performances apparently guided by feeling concludes, when he comes to the spinal cord, that feeling though latent must still be there to make it act so rationally. Clearly such arguments as these may mutually eat each other up to all eternity.