258 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE UPON pp. 171, 218, 231. 



IN the Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, No. 27, July 

 7th, 1907, is a treatise, entitled A Contribution to the 

 Question, What is Life ? by Dr. Dahl, who was the third 

 speaker at the evening discussion. In this treatise he lays 

 stress upon the fact that there is nothing mystical in the 

 expression vital force/ but that it is only another name 

 for the properties peculiar to living creatures. Some of 

 his statements regarding psychical life are particularly 

 worthy of notice. From the standpoint of his own ex 

 perience, Dr. Dahl speaks very decidedly against the 

 monistic theory of identity. The processes of movement, 

 that go on in the brain, remain always something totally 

 different from the phenomena of consciousness. If we 

 regard their actual connection as constituting an identity, 

 as the monists do, we at once leave the terra firma of 

 experience, and find ourselves in the region of mysticism. 

 We are unable to adduce a single fact, based on experience, 

 in support of their identity. . . . However much we may 

 struggle against dualism, we cannot avoid its acceptance, 

 if we abide strictly by what experience teaches, as it 

 behoves students of natural science to do. 



I have just received a work entitled Ultramontane Welt 

 anschauung und moderne Lebenskunde, Orthodoxie und 

 Monismus. Die Anschauungen des Jesuitenpaters Erich 

 Wasmann und die gegen ihn in Berlin gehaltenen Reden, 

 herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Plate. Berlin. Mit 12 Text- 

 figuren. Jena, 1907. Gustav Fischer. (Ultramontane Views 

 of the Position of Man in the Universe and the Modern 



