HAECKEL'S PHILOSOPHY. 421 



pain, loves and hates, has desires and aversions, but these states are all 

 unconscious. Unconscious sensations, pleasures, pains and impulses 

 are greater riddles than the things they are manufactured to explain. 

 Haeckel seems to feel this when it comes to organic life, for here he 

 identifies these unconscious processes with physical and chemical forces, 

 though he is vacillating on his point as usual ; the physical processes are 

 sometimes the forces themselves, sometimes the functions of these 

 forces. Out of these unconscious processes consciousness arises in the 

 brains of higher animals. The thing is as simple as it can be. Ideas 

 which have been unconscious mirror themselves in the brain, begin to 

 look at themselves. Consciousness develops as a subjective mirroring of 

 the objective processes in the neuroplasm of the soul cells* and the 

 thing is done. What could be fairer than that ? And then these mir- 

 rored ideas, these ideas or rather brain processes that have suddenly 

 tsken it into their heads to look at themselves, add themselves together 

 and form personalities and all higher processes of mind. The whole 

 problem of existence is a problem of arithmetic. Atoms add themselves 

 together to form bodies, bodies add themselves together to form worlds, 

 ideas add themselves together to form thought, science, philosophy. In- 

 stead of answers to problems we get new and more difficult problems. 

 It is no explanation of soul life to assume it as an attribute of the sub- 

 stance; it is no explanation of consciousness to deduce it from uncon- 

 scious processes; it is no explanation of the human mind to conceive it 

 as a sum-total of ideas. 



This gives us Haeckel's philosophy of nature, his philosophy of life 

 and his philosophy of mind. He believes that he has solved for us the 

 problem of the essence of matter and energy, the origin of motion, the 

 origin of life, the purposive arrangement of nature, the origin of 

 thought and language, the origin of simple sensation and conscious- 

 ness. The problem of matter and energy is solved by making matter 

 and energy attributes of an underlying substance which is a greater 

 riddle than they, and which perhaps does not even exist. We are never 

 told what the essence of any of these things is. Afterwards matter 

 seems to become the substance and energy its function. Energy is con- 

 ceived as sentient force, as unconscious psychical life, and all the pro- 

 cesses of soul life and consciousness are regarded as different forms of 

 it or as functions. of it. Matter, in other words, is the bearer of the 

 different forces of nature, from the forces of attraction and repulsion 

 or unconscious love and hate up to consciousness. Matter is king, energy 

 is the subject. The origin of motion is not explained either. We are 

 told that the substance is in eternal motion: ' motion is as immanent 

 and original a property of the substance as sensation/ f We are also 



* ' Weltraethsel,' p. 151. 



t On page 253 the substance seems to be conceived as originally in a state 

 of rest. 



