“Noi lamentiamo con Majendie che nel linguaggio fisiologico siensi intruse le preopinioni psicologiche col trascico inevitabile del vocaboli, ai quali codeste preopinioni si trovano legate. Probabilmente questa fu una delle principali cagioni degli errori e degli equivoci anatomofisiologici, da cui non poterono svincolarsi, a loro insaputa, i cultori sperimentali della scienza, perchè nell’ interpretare i fenomeni osservati erano obbligati ad usare il linguaggio di una false moneta in corso.”--LUSSANA _e_ LEMOIGNE, _Fisiologia dei Centri Nervosi_, 1871, I. 16. ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. CHAPTER I. THE COURSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 1. Modern Philosophy has moved along two increasingly divergent lines. One, traversed by Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Laplace, had for its goal the absolute disengagement of the physical from the mental, i. e. the objective from the subjective aspect of phenomena, so that the physical universe, thus freed from all the complexities of Feeling, might be interpreted in mechanical terms. As a preliminary simplification of the problem this was indispensable; only by it could the First Notion of primitive speculation be replaced by the Theoretic Conception of scientific speculation.[204] The early thinker inevitably invested all external objects with properties and qualities similar to those he assigned to human beings, and their actions he assigned to human motives. Sun, moon, and stars seemed living beings; flames, streams, and winds were supposed to be moved by feelings such as those known to move animals and men. Nor was any other conception then possible: men could only interpret the unknown by the known, and their standard of all action was necessarily drawn from their own actions. Not having analyzed Volition and Emotion, above all not having localized these in a neuro-muscular system, men could not suspect that the movements of planets and plants, and of streams and stones, had motors of a different kind from the movements of animals. The scientific conception of inert insensible Matter was only attained through a long education in abstraction; and is assuredly never attained by animals, or by savages. But no sooner were vital conditions recognized, than the difference between vital and mechanical movements emerged. When men learned that many of their own actions were unaccompanied either by Love or Hate, by Pleasure or Pain, and that many were unprompted by conscious intention, while others were unaccompanied by conscious sensation, they easily concluded that wherever the special conditions of Feeling were absent, the actions must have some other motors. Intelligence, Emotion, Volition, and Sensation being one by one stripped away from all but a particular class of bodies, nothing remained for the other bodies but insensible Matter and Motion. This was the Theoretic Conception which science substituted for the First Notion. It was aided by the observation