As it is very necessary to keep up a clear distinction between
these two processes, let the one be called _neurosis_, and the other
_psychosis_. When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work, every
step in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding
step in that of psychosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing
something, conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of
desiring to catch it, and therefore to loose the greyhound at the
right time, conscious of the acts by which he let the dog out of the
leash. But with practice, though the various steps of the neurosis
remain--for otherwise the impression on the retina would not result
in the loosing of the dog--the great majority of the steps of the
psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows unconsciously, or
as we say, without thinking about it, upon the sight of the hare.
No one will deny that the series of acts which originally intervened
between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the
strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease
to be so when the man ceases to be conscious of them? That depends
upon what is the essence and what the accident of those operations,
which, taken together, constitute ratiocination.
Now ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication
consists in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-existence,
the succession, the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas.
Whatever does this, reasons; and if a machine produces the effects of
reason, I see no more ground for denying to it the reasoning power,
because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing to Mr. Babbage's
engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds.
Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious
or unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone,
or whether it involves more or less psychosis. And if this is true
of the gamekeeper, it is also true of the greyhound. The essential
resemblances in all points of structure and function, so far as they
can be studied, between the nervous system of the man and that of the
dog, leave no reasonable doubt that the processes which go on in the
one are just like those which take place in the other. In the dog,
there can be no doubt that the nervous matter which lies between
the retina and the muscles undergoes a series of changes, precisely
analogous to those which, in the man, give rise to sensation, a train
of thought, and volition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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