teaches us how, in a thousand ways, conscious and unconscious 
actions pass over continually one into the other. Countless 
performances of daily life, as e.g., the use of drinking vessels, of 
knife and fork, reading and writing, the playing of musical instru- 
ments, &c., depend on a complicated working of nerves and muscles, 
which originally must have been slowly learnt with careful reflection 
and evident consciousness, but gradually by exercise and habit 
has become quite unconscious. Every morning when we wash 
and dress, get up and go out, we perform hundreds of complicated 
moyements quite unconsciously, which originally must have been 
painfully and gradually learnt, with consciousness. Conversely, the 
most various unconscious actions return at once to clear conscious- 
ness, whenever from any cause our attention is directed thereto 
and self-observation is aroused. No sooner do we make a false 
step in going up or down stairs or strike a false note on the piano, 
than we are at once made conscious of the unconscious act. 
Besides this, we can also without doubt follow up, step by step, 
the gradual progress of the development of consciousness in every 
child. On the score of such matters of fact, we can no longer 
doubt that consciousness depends on a complicated working 
of the soul-cells, first arising gradually through adaptation to 
surrounding circumstances, and thus by inherited adaptations 
being slowly developed more extensively. We learn the same 
from the comparative development-history of soul-life in the 
animal kingdom. The complicated molecular movements in 
the protoplasm of soul-cells, whose highest result is reason and 
thought, understanding and consciousness, have first been acquired 
in the course of many millions of years by a process of natural 
education. For even the brain, the organ of those functions, in 
the course of this long space of time, has been quite slowly and 
gradually developed from the simplest to the most elaborated form. 
Here, as everywhere, the development of the organ goes hand in 
hand with that of its function: the instrument perfects its elabor- 
ation with its work.* 
* It will be observed that in these and the preceding remarks of Hxckel’s, 
nothing whatever is really shewn as to the origization of consciousness, and 
