May 9, 1889] 



NATURE 



29 



manifested also in dream, and are even indicated, though 

 still more indefinitely, in waking life. It is contended 

 that in this way the whole dream-life is reclaimed from 

 its presumed worthlessness for scientific and philosophical 

 purposes. 



A duality of person with a unity of essence is the theory 

 which commends itself to Baron du Prel,and he has worked 

 out with much skill and acumen the details of an hypothesis 

 to which his evident earnestness induces us to accord a 

 hearing even when we are compelled to dissent from his 

 conclusions. This hypothesis will have none of science, 

 falsely so called ; it sets at nought the accepted views of 

 the physiologist and the materialist, and is a new, if 

 nebulous, gospel of transcendental existence and appar- 

 ently limitless progression, Man's life is moulded by his 

 conception of his relation to the world, and that concep- 

 tion the present work is to radically revise. Who can 

 tell if in the twentieth century the acceptance of these 

 mystical views may not transform the present eager, 

 struggling, money-grubbing crowd into a fraternity of 

 peaceful philosophers finding in the placid pleasures of 

 catalepsy an efficient substitute for the excitement of a 

 boom in copper and for the fevered gambling of the Stock 

 Exchange .'' 



The author is very hard in his strictures upon the 

 feeble physiologist, the wicked materialist, and indeed 

 upon the modern professors of science generally, whom 

 he abandons to their "exact amusements," whilst he 

 seeks " the true theory in the bare analysis of the process 

 which takes place in memory," and it is really wonderful 

 what a superstructure he raises on the basis of that 

 analysis. His preliminary dig at contemporary men of 

 science he follows up with cuts and thrusts at intervals, but 

 his salient grievance is that one and all fail to conceive 

 progress otherwise than on their existing plane, whereas 

 true progress must be inevitably vertical. With the 

 advent of experimental methods, we learn, the world ot 

 science believed itself to have discovered a means for the 

 attainment of all available knowledge, but the belief is 

 erroneous. Not only is science still very far from its 

 goal, but with the completion of its existing tasks, new 

 prospects will be opened in the vertical direction. Should 

 science succeed in explaining the whole visible world, 

 that explanation is only as to a represented universe, a 

 secondary phenomenon, a mere product of our sense and 

 understanding, leaving the true world untouched. The 

 quality of our consciousness in its relation to that world 

 has still to be considered, and by such a method alone 

 can its true nature be in any degree discovered. The 

 visible world undergoes qualitative changes in the gene- 

 ration of consciousness, for, since the vibration of ether 

 is in consciousness light and atmospheric vibration 

 sound, it is evident that we are not truly cognizant of 

 things, but only of the inodes in which our senses react 

 upon them. Taking all which and much more besides 

 into consideration, the author sums up the result of 

 human thought on the world-problem by saying that 

 " consciousness does not exhaust its object, the world," a 

 remark somewhat analogous to that of the Danish prince 

 who observed that " there are more things in heaven and 

 earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 



As the world is the object of consciousness, so is the 

 E^o that of self-consciousness ; and here, sa) s the Baron, 



materialism still flatters itself with the hope of reducing 

 all psychology to physiology. It is deceived : self-con- 

 sciousness does not exhaust its object, but is as inade- 

 quate to the Ego as consciousness is to the world, and 

 the Ego may as much exceed self-consciousness as con- 

 sciousness is exceeded by the world. The degree of the 

 excess, is, however, not absolutely constant, since, by 

 the rise of consciousness in the biological process, the 

 boundary between the conscious and transcendental worlds 

 has been and will be continually displaced. Of being, 

 other than representation, we know nothing, and spirit is 

 the primary and the real, for were its perceptive faculty 

 changed, the whole material world of representation 

 would be transformed ; a clear demonstration that the 

 represented world is a mere creature of the spirit. 

 Behind consciousness is the ultimate being of which 

 that consciousness is but the reflection, and as this ulti- 

 mate being is beyond consciousness the Baron terms it the 

 unconscious. This unconscious may either lie imme- 

 diately behind the physically conditioned consciousness, 

 or may be so indefinitely removed as to allow of an inter- 

 mediate root of conscious individuality which is only 

 relatively unconscious for the organism of sense. The 

 author finds such an intermediary in his so-called psycho- 

 physical threshold of sensibility, which is the shifting 

 barrier between the unconscious and self-consciousness. 

 He conceives a dualism of consciousness, the division 

 of two " persons " in one subject, but his conception 

 differs from the popular conception of the dualism of 

 soul and body, of matter and spirit, of Nature and 

 supernatural. This dualism of consciousness is, with 

 him, an intelligence which emerges with clearness and 

 power just in proportion to the cessation of the organic 

 functions with which the consciousness of waking life is 

 associated ; the two halves of our consciousness, divided 

 by the movable threshold of sensibihty, forming the 

 subject which is an organizing as well as a thinking 

 principle. The hypothesis of transcendental individuality 

 co-existent with the earthly life and constructive of the 

 organism by which consciousness is (from the earthly 

 stand-point) dualized, necessitates the doctrine of pre- 

 existence. Transcendental individuality implies a dis- 

 tinction from personal consciousness, and that the soul is 

 not wholly plunged in the successive bodies which it 

 constructs ; the personal consciousness with its Ego 

 being the mere partial and temporary limitation of a 

 larger self, the growth of many seasons of earthly life. 



The state of the individual after death is not precisely 

 defined, but is suggested by the similitude of the smaller 

 of two concentric circles expanding to the larger; the 

 circumference of the inner circle being the organic 

 threshold of sensibility, which death removes altogether, 

 as it is already partially removed in such analogous 

 states as sleep, somnambulism, &c. As in preoccupation 

 the mind is concentrated to a focus, and subsequently 

 expands to the limits of consciousness, so is earthly 

 consciousness in death expanded to the boundary limits 

 of the true Ego. 



Transcendental subjectivity provides for continuity of 

 consciousness, but the experience and whole activity of 

 one of our objective life-times will be assimilated for 

 results independent of those proposed by the contracted 

 Ego^ wh.ich bear but a minute proportion to the gradually 



