THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 225 



penetrability of matter. In virtue of the law of impenetra- 

 bility, no two material particles, no two bodies, no two in- 

 tegral parts of the same body, can occupy one and the same 

 place. One part of a body can, indeed, act on another part 

 extrinsic to itself; but one and the same part or particle 

 cannot act upon itself. To become at once observed and 

 observer, a material organ would have to split itself in two, 

 so that the part watched could be distinct from, and spatially 

 external to, the part watching. The power of perfect reflection, 

 therefore, must reside in the spiritual soul, and cannot be 

 bound to, and coextensive with, a material organ. Only in 

 this supposition can there be a return of the subject upon 

 and into itself, only in this supposition can there be that 

 identification of observed and observer implied by the process 

 of reflection. H. Griinder, in his "Psychology without a Soul," 

 gives a graphic reductio ad absurdum of the contrary as- 

 sumption: "A fairy tale," he says, "tells of a knight who was 

 beheaded by his victorious foe. But, strange to relate, the 

 vanquished knight rose to his feet, seized his severed head and 

 bore it off, as in triumph. The most remarkable part, how- 

 ever, of the story is that with a last effort of gallantry he 

 took his own head, and — kissed its brow. The climax of this 

 fairy tale is no more absurd than the assumption that a ma- 

 terial organ can know itself and philosophize on itself. Only if 

 we admit with the scholastics a simple soul intrinsically inde- 

 pendent of any bodily organism, can we explain the possibility 

 of perfect psychological reflexion." {Cf. pp. 193, 194.) 



For the rest the impossibility of introspection on the part 

 of a material organ is so evident that the materialists them- 

 selves freely concede it, and being unwilling to admit the 

 spirituality of the human intellect, they are forced to resort to 

 the disingenuous expedient of denying the fact of reflection 

 on the part of the human mind. "It is obvious," says 

 Auguste Comte, "that by an invincible necessity the human 

 mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own. We 



