256 Heredity. 



at from without, and that the moral is the physical looked at from 

 within. The difference between physical and moral is subjective, 

 not objective ; it pertains not to their own nature, but to our way 

 of viewing them. Physics has demonstrated that heat, light, and 

 sound appear to us as different, only because each of them is 

 addressed to a different sense, so that all the difference comes from 

 ourselves. The psychologist ought to see that the physical and 

 the moral appear different to us, only because the one is cognized 

 by the external senses and under the condition of time and space, 

 and the other by the inner sense, under the condition of time ; so 

 that all the difference comes from ourselves. Thus the absolute, 

 under its unconditioned form, would be entirely beyond our reach, 

 and the conditioned forms in which it is manifested to us in experi- 

 ence would be opposites only by an illusion of our thought. 



Perhaps we might proceed further, and draw an important 

 deduction. If we admit the identity of physical and moral pheno- 

 mena ; if we observe that all that is in the living being forms a 

 continuous series from perfect unconsciousness, if there be such a 

 thing, to perfect consciousness ; if, again, there be such a thing; if 

 it be borne in mind that the unconscious is the abyss into which 

 everything enters and from which everything proceeds, the very 

 root of all our mental life, and that our personality is like a wan- 

 dering light on a vast and sombre lake, where it appears as though 

 swallowed up each moment, then, perhaps, we shall be inclined to 

 admit that the physical order and the moral order, which in our 

 consciousness appear to be different things, are identical in the 

 unconscious ; that conscious duality is derived from an unconscious 

 unity, so that in the unconscious, matter and thought, object and 

 subject, external and internal, are one. This special reconciliation 

 of the physical and moral in man would thus lead to the recon- 

 ciliation of the object in general with the subject in general, of the 

 universe with thought 



This, it is true, is a metaphysical hypothesis, but then it is 

 neither possible nor desirable to give up metaphysics and hypo- 

 thesis. This hypothesis has been put forward by men who are as 

 sturdy upholders of experience as are to be found, and who have 

 treated psychology as a natural science. ' If we admit,' says Wundt, 

 ' the identity of physical and psychical facts, then the former will 



