complexity in the same conceivable category of being; so that there would be nothing actually inconceivable in cerebral sequence--changes running through _D, E, F_, &c., to an extent sufficient to cause unconscious automatism of any degree of complexity. But that which does require explanation from automatists is why automatism should have become associated with consciousness, and this so intimately that every change in the sequence _A, B, C_, &c., is accompanied by a particular and corresponding change in the sequence _a, b, c_, &c. Thus, to take a definite illustration, if on seeing the sun I think of a paper on solar physics, and from this pass to thinking of Mr. Norman Lockyer, and from this to speculating on the probability of certain supposed elements being really compounds, there is here a definite causal connexion in the sequence of my _thoughts_. But it is the last extravagance of absurdity to tell me that the accompanying causal sequences going on in my brain happen to have exactly corresponded to the sequences which were taking place in the mind, the two trains of sequences being each definite and coherent in themselves, and yet each proceeding link for link in lines parallel with the other. Without some theory of pre-established harmony--which, of course, it is no part of automatism to entertain--it would, on the doctrine of chances alone, be impossible to suppose that the causal sequences in the brain always happen to be just those which, by running link for link with another set of causal sequences taking place in the mind, enable both the series to be definite and coherent in themselves. Therefore, before reason can allow the theory of automatism to pass, it must be told how this wonderful fact of parallelism is to be explained. There must be _some_ connexion between the intrinsically coherent series _A, B, C_ and the no less intrinsically coherent sequence _a, b, c_, which may be taken as an explanation why they coincide each to each. What is this connexion? We do not know; but we have now seen that, whatever it is, it cannot be an ordinary causal connexion--first, because the doctrine of the conservation of energy makes it incumbent on us to believe that the procession of physical cause and effect is complete within the region of brain--a closed circle, as it were, from which no energy can, without argumentative suicide, be supposed to escape into the region of mind; and next, because, even were this difficulty disregarded, it is unaccountable that the causative influence (whatever it is supposed to be), which passes over from the region of physics into that of psychics, should be such as to render the psychical series coherent in itself, when on the physical side the series must be determined by purely physical conditions, having no reference whatsoever to psychical requirements.