HAEC EEL'S PHILOSOPHY. 417 



of the origin and nature of the soul is solved by phylogenetic psy- 

 chology. The human soul is evolved from a long series of other 

 mammalian souls. The historical evolution of the human soul out of a 

 long series of higher and lower mammalian souls must be regarded as 

 a scientifically proved fact. 



Consciousness is a natural phenomenon like all the other soul ac- 

 tivities. Consciousness is inner intuition, perception, Anschauung, an 

 inner reflection or mirroring. We may divide it into world-consciousness 

 and self-consciousness. The former embraces all possible phenomena 

 of the external world which are possible to our knowledge ; the latter is 

 an inner mirroring of our own soul activity, of all ideas, sensations, 

 strivings, and will acts.* Consciousness and psychical life are not 

 identical; psychical life extends farther than consciousness. Uncon- 

 scious sensations, ideas and impulses also belong to soul life; indeed, 

 this field is larger than the other. 



Consciousness is bound to a centralized nervous system. The pres- 

 ence of a nervous central organ, highly developed sense-organs and 

 association-groups, is essential to the existence of unitary consciousness. 

 Protists have no developed ego-consciousness; their sensations and 

 movements are unconscious. In short there is no consciousness until 

 we reach the higher animals. The elementary psychic activities are 

 all unconscious. The riddle of consciousness is no riddle at all. The 

 neurological problem of consciousness is only a special case of the 

 all-embracing cosmological problem, of the problem of substance. The 

 problem of consciousness is a physiological problem, and as such to be 

 reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry. Consciousness is 

 therefore only a part of the higher soul activity, and as such dependent 

 upon the normal structure of the corresponding soul organ, the brain. 

 It is absolutely dependent upon the chemical changes of the brain 

 substance. It is not an immaterial being, but a physiological function 

 of the brain. The new-born child is without consciousness ; conscious- 

 ness is a late development, arising first when the child learns to talk. 



It is only in the significant moment when the child says I for the first time, 

 when its ego feeling becomes clear, that its self-consciousness begins to sprout, 

 and with this the opposition to the external world. 



With the death of man all physiological activities cease, and with 

 them the 'soul,' that is, that sum of brain functions which psychical 

 dualism regards as a separate being, independent of the other mani- 

 festations of the living body. The protozoa are just as mortal in the 

 physiological, and hence also in the psychological, sense as the metazoa. 

 Energy and matter are inseparably connected. We distinguish between 

 the psychical energy (sensation, presentation, willing) and psychical 



* ' Weltraethsel,' pp. 197ff. See also ' Monismus,' pp. 22f. 

 vol. lxi. — 27. 



