10 THE RISE OF MAN. 



nonienon. It is a state of awareness and in this state of 

 awareness something is represented. This state of aware- 

 ness has a meaning, which may be called its contents. 



I do not hesitate to consider the meaning that feeling 

 acquires as the characteristic feature not only of animal 

 but especially also of intellectual life of the life of man. 

 From meaning-freighted feelings soul-life originates. Let 

 every special feeling, representing a special condition or 

 object, be constituted by a special form of nerve-action, 

 and we should see the soul, the psychological aspect of 

 nerve-forms, develop together with the organism. A 

 higher development leads naturally, as a rule but not 

 without exceptions, to a greater complexity of nerve-form. 

 Yet it is not this complexity which constitutes the evolu- 

 tion of the soul and the progress in the development of 

 the organism. The progress of soul -life must be traced 

 in the meaning with which the feelings that live in the 

 action of these nerve-forms, are freighted. 



What is this meaning ? 



The different soul-forms (so we may for brevity's 

 sake call these feelings, living in the different nerve-struc- 

 tures) represent special experiences and through these 

 experiences the surroundings of the organism are depicted. 

 The soul accordingly is an image of the world impressed 

 into living substance and depicted in feelings. This how- 

 ever is not all ; the soul is more than that. It is also the 

 psychical aspect of the reaction that takes place in response 

 to the stimuli of the surroundings. And this reaction is 

 indeed the most important part in the life of the soul. 

 The former may be called by a generalized name cogni- 

 tion or intelligence, the latter activity or ethics. The 

 former has no other purpose than to serve as an informa- 

 tion for the proper direction and guidance of the latter. 



The world is not a chaos of material particles. Blind 

 chance does not rule supreme. On the contrary we see 

 order everywhere and law is the regulating principle in 



