Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/360

352 and Descartes supposed that all their movements might be thus accounted for—that they were, like the movements of sensitive plants, absolutely detached from consciousness or sensation, and that, in fact, animals were mere machines or automata, devoid not only of reason, but of any kind of consciousness.

It must be admitted that Descartes' arguments are not easy to disprove, and no doubt certain cases of disease or injury—as, for instance, that of the soldier described by Dr. Mesnet, who, as a result of a wound in the head, fell from time to time into a condition of unconsciousness, during which, however, he ate, drank, smoked, dressed and undressed, and even wrote—have supplied additional evidence in support of his views. Huxley, while fully admitting this, came, and I think rightly, to the conclusion that the consciousness of which we feel certain in ourselves must have been evolved very gradually, and must therefore exist, though probably in a less degree, in other animals.

No one, indeed, I think, who has kept and studied pets, even if they be only ants and bees, can bring himself to regard them as mere machines.

The foundation of the Metaphysical Society led to the invention of the term 'Agnostic.' "When I reached intellectual maturity," Huxley tells us, "and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist or a pantheist, a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain 'gnosis'—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. . . ."

These considerations pressed forcibly on him when he joined the Metaphysical Society.

"Every variety," he says, "of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were 'ists' of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a habit to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap, in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of agnostic. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the gnostic of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the