and the other
taking place in a something which when, translated by the previous
something, we recognize as having extension and the other antithetical
properties which we class together as physical. There would of course be
no difficulty if the sequence _A, B, C_ continued through any amount of
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