38 GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 



individuality is only a part of this complex of ideas, just as is the 

 individuality of other men and the whole physical world. 



Although this reasoning will appear to every one at first sight 

 strange and unusual, it is by no means new. More than two hun- 

 dred years ago Descartes made the fundamental fact, that the whole 

 physical world is only an idea, the starting-point of his philosophy. 

 Later, Berkeley and, still later, Fichte and Schopenhauer employed it 

 as the basis of their systems, which were widely different in other 

 respects. More recently among men of science Mach ('86) has 

 adopted a similar view as the nucleus of his views regarding the 

 theory of knowledge. It is to be hoped that this monistic con- 

 ception will gain ground more and more in science ; it alone holds 

 strictly to experience, it is not hypothetical, and it necessarily sets 

 aside the ancient doctrine of the dualism of the body and the mind, 

 a doctrine that reached its highest development in the Egyptian 

 theory of the wandering of the soul and has continued through the 

 whole history of philosophy. 



3. Psycho-monism 



When the history of the problems that have kept the human 

 intellect busy during the long course of its evolution is studied, it 

 is found that many problems that perplexed the ancients have con- 

 tinued unchanged and unsolved down to the present day ; others 

 have been solved ; while still others that have been prominent 

 even for centuries have afterwards disappeared without finding a 

 solution. The ancient question of the squaring of the circle, 

 over which many a brain has puzzled in vain, that of perpetual 

 motion, which since early times has been prominent in physics, and 

 many others, have quite disappeared, although no one has ever 

 squared the circle and no one has constructed a machine for per- 

 petual motion. If it be asked how it happens that this is so, the 

 answer is, because it is recognised that the basis of these supposed 

 problems is false, and they are, therefore, insoluble. If the attempt 

 be made to divide all the numbers of a series by 2 without a 

 remainder, it is found impossible to do it. So it is with the above 

 problems, which for centuries have harassed one generation of 

 thinkers after another. 



So it is also with the attempted explanation of psychical by 

 physical events. It still engages unremittingly the attention of 

 those who are not pleased with having limitations to their conception 

 of the world, yet no one, however earnest his thought, comes nearer 

 a solution. Only gradually will the conviction force its way, that 

 this problem, like those above mentioned, will always resist solution 

 because the question is falsely put. 



That the attempted explanation is wrong is at once clear from 



