THEISTIC AND ATHEISTIC EVOLUTION 31 



into the organism, and, in short, effect the purpose 

 of the vital process by action from within. This 

 postulate is eminently reasonable I personally 

 cannot dispense with it, and should not be able to 

 dispense with it, even if theology did not exist. 



6. We now come to a further postulate required 

 by the Christian theory of life, and it is that against 

 which the monists protest most vigorously at the 

 present time, viz. the assumption that man possesses 

 a spiritual and immortal soul. Christian philosophy 

 long ago expressed the opinion that beasts also are 

 not mere machines, and when some modern philo 

 sophers declared ants and other invertebrates to 

 be reflex machines, advocates of Christian philo 

 sophy, basing their arguments on biological facts, 

 proved this view to be untenable. 1 



We cannot dispense with the assumption that 

 beasts possess some psychical activity, but how far % 

 does it go ? Only as far as the sphere of the senses 

 extends. On the intellectual side the whole psychical 

 activity of beasts is limited to sense perception, to 

 the connection of such perceptions with one another, 

 to memory, and to the modification of earlier forms 

 of activity in accordance with sense experience. 

 This psychical activity brings into action the inborn 

 tendencies and directs them suitably to perform the 



1 Albrecht Bethe, May we ascribe Psychical Qualities to Ants and Bees ? 

 Bonn, 1898 ; E. Wasmann, The Psychical Capabilities of Ants, Stuttgart, 

 1899. For further details regarding my argument with Bethe, see the 

 third edition of my book, Instinct and Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom, 

 Freiburg i. B., 1905, chap. viii. p. 157 et seq. 



