6 PHYSIOLOGY 



Vitalism, inasmuch as it recognises the experimental method as the 

 exclusive means of scientific progress. 



When, on the other hand, we consider psychical phenomena 

 (sensibility and consciousness), the impossibility of reducing these 

 to physical and chemical processes becomes even more apparent. 



Ostwald (1902) has recently attempted to formulate a unitary 

 conception of the world by excluding the materialistic postulates 

 of natural science, i.e. by eliminating the chemical concept of the 

 atoms and substituting the physical concept of energy, psychical 

 processes being regarded as special manifestations of energy. This 

 Energetic Monism of Ostwald is, however, illusory. It is a new 

 and degenerate presentation of the old Idealistic Monism of Hegel, 

 in which the word energy is substituted for the empty word " idea," 

 although equally devoid of definite content. In what, then, does 

 the essential difference between the various forms of physical and 

 that of the supposed psychical energy consist ? In that the former 

 are perceptible solely by the mediation of the senses, the latter by 

 introspection alone the first being objective, the second subjective 

 phenomena ? It is, however, precisely in this antithesis that the 

 vulgar dualistic doctrine of the corporeal as distinct from the 

 spiritual world arises. This theory, which was adumbrated by 

 primitive man from his observations of death (as appears from 

 ethnological and prehistoric studies), became, in the course of 

 centuries, deeply embedded in the mind of the whole civilised 

 world, resisting like a granite block the most potent and repeated 

 attempts of scientific and philosophical critics to dislodge it. Du 

 Bois-Eeymond says in this connection: "It is fundamentally 

 impossible to explain by any mechanical means why the note 

 of a Konig's tuning-fork gives me pleasure, while contact with 

 red-hot iron gives me pain " (1872). 



A more profound (but in our opinion no less illusory) 

 attempt to arrive at a monistic conception is that put for- 

 ward by Mach in his well-known Analysis of the Sensations, 

 and the Relations of the Physical and Psychical (3rd ed., 1902). 

 According to Mach the dualism between body and soul exists in 

 appearance only, and results from a superficial observation of 

 reality. More profound reflection shows that the ultimate 

 elements of reality are nothing but sensations. The entire 

 corporeal world, organic or inorganic, is for us nothing but an 

 aggregate of sensations ; the whole of our thought is similarly 

 constituted of a more or less complex combination of sensations. 

 Hence there is no reason to postulate an essential difference, still 

 less an antagonism, between the physical fact and the psychical 

 fact ; the one like the other, in last resort, results from homo- 

 geneous elements. The disparities are in appearance only, and 

 depend upon the different construction of the aggregates, while 

 the elements of these are quantitatively identical. 



