THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGISTS 



gether to " try out " all possible conditions of life that the result 

 may be the largest possible experience of individual, self-conscious 

 life. This inborn interest is the prime factor in attention, associ- 

 ation, purpose and will. " One can apperceive nothing and think 

 of nothing which does not conform to the interest inhering in 

 it." l 



The factors to be found in the lowest forms of organic life which 

 make possible all further differentiation and development are as 

 follows: 



1. The Urkraft endowed with the capacity of struggling to 

 ever increasing development under conditions imposed by the 

 environment. 



2. Interest inborn in every creature. 



3. The power of assimilation or the physiological impulse, also 

 rooted in the interest but possessing different influence because it 

 works no longer merely through the Urkraft within the creature 

 but draws to it particles from the outside world. 



4. The influence of the phenomenal world. The individual 

 impelled by interest and struggling to come to completion, 

 creates out of the conditions of life at hand the greatest possible 

 advantage for the development of the species through variation 

 and adaptation. 



5. Indiwduation, or the process by which the creature working 

 through the inborn interest builds up a unitary consciousness. 



6. Reproduction as the result of the continuous working of the 

 Urkraft in and through the individual. 



7. Heredity, whereby the creature is able to bring forth only a 

 like offspring on the basis of his inner capacity. 2 



Selection and struggle for existence are recognized as two 

 further factors to be taken into consideration in the explanation 

 of biological evolution. 3 



As a result of the struggle for development on the part of the 

 Urkraft every " preformed " germ develops just in proportion as 

 the conditions of life make possible, 4 even to the expression of 

 purposeful acts of civilized man. 6 



1 Erkenntnis, p. 34. Ibid., pp. 40 f. * Ibid., pp. 302 f.; Soziologie, p. 23. 

 8 Ibid., pp. 38, 39. Ibid., p. 46. 



