HPB-SB-3-110: Difference between revisions

as well as he can, the first law. of motion. You see I have said he makes his cigarettes, but you may make his tobacco of shavings or of anything else you like, and still he will go on making his cigarettes as usual. His action is purely mechanical. As I said, he feeds voraciously, but whether you give him aloes or asafætida, or the nicest thing possible— (Laughter)—it is all the same to him. He is just like my frog—(Laughter)—he goes on feeding. The man is in a condition absolutely parallel to that of the frog I have just described, and no doubt when ho is in this condition, the functions of his cerebral hemisphere are at any rate largely annihilated. He is very nearly—I don’t say wholly, but very nearly—in the condition of an animal in which the cerebral hemispheres are not entirely extirpated, but very largely damaged. And his state is wonderfully interesting to me, for it bears on the phenomena of mesmerism of which I saw a good deal when I was a young man. In this state he is capable of performing all sorts of actions on mere suggestions—as, for example, he dropped his cane, and a person near him put it into his hand, and the feeling of the end of the cane evidently produced in him those molecular changes of the brain which, had he possessed consciousness, would have given rise to the idea of his rifle ; for he threw himself on his face, began feeling about for his cartouche, went through the motions of loading his gun, and shouted out to an imaginary comrade, “ Here they are, a score of them ; but we will give a good account of them.” This paper to which I refer is full of the most remarkable examples of this kind, and what is the most remarkable fact of all is the modifications which this injury has made in the man’s moral nature. In his normal life he is one of the most upright and honest of men. In his abnormal state, however, he is an inveterate thief. He will steal everything he can lay his hands upon—(Laughter)—and if he cannot steal anything else he will steal his own things and hide them away. (Laughter). Now, if Descartes had had this fact before him, need I tell you that his theory of animal automatism would have been enormously strengthened. (Applause). He would have said, “ Here I show you a case of a man performing actions evidently more complicated, and mostly more rational, than any of the ordinary operations of animals, and yet you have positive proof that these actions are purely mechanical.