MAN. 103 responding movement of the gland, whose motions vary ac- cording to the sensuous properties of the object to be per- ceived, and responds by sensations. Although Descartes thus limits the direct interaction of soul and body to a small part of the organism, he makes an exception in the case of memoria, which appears to him to be more of a physical than a psychical function, and which he conjec- tures to be diffused through the whole brain. In spite of the comprehensive meaning which Descartes gives to the notion cogitatio, it is yet too narrow to leave room for an anima vegetativa and an aniina sensitiva. Whoever makes mind and soul equivalent, holds that their essence consists in conscious activity alone, and interprets sensation as a mode of thought, cannot escape the paradox of denying to animals the possession of a soul. Descartes does not shrink from such a conclusion. Animals are mere machines ; they are bodies animated, but soulless ; they lack conscious perception and appetition, though not the ap- pearance of them. When a clock strikes seven it knows nothing of the fact ; it does not regret that it is so late nor long soon to be able to strike eight ; it wills nothing, feels nothing, perceives nothing. The lot of the brute is the same. It sees and hears nothing, it does not hunger or thirst, it does not rejoice or fear, if by these anything more than mere corporeal phenomena is to be meant ; of all these it possesses merely the unconscious material basis ; it moves and motion goes on in it — that is all. The psychology of Descartes, which has had important results,* divides cogitationes into two classes : actiories and passiones. Action denotes everything which takes its ori- gin in, and is in the power of, the soul ; passion, everything which the soul receives from without, in which it can make no change, which is impressed upon it. The further de- velopment of this distinction is marred by the crossing of the most diverse lines of thought, resulting in obscurities and contradictions. Descartes's simple, naive habits of thought and speech, which were those of a man of the world rather than of a scholar, were quite incompatible with the adop- tion and consistent use of a finely discriminated termi-
- For details cf. the able monograph of Dr. Anton Koch, 1881.
