THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



These views of the distinguished botanist fully agree 

 with my monistic principles. 



When sensation in the widest sense (as psychoma) is 

 joined to matter and energy as a third attribute of sub- 

 stance, we must extend the universal law of the per- 

 manence of substance to all three aspects of it. From 

 this we conclude that the quantity of sensation in the 

 entire universe is also eternal and unchangeable, and 

 that every change of sensation means only the conver- 

 sion of one form of psychoma into other forms. If we 

 start from our own immediate sensations and thoughts, 

 and look out on the whole mental life of humanity, we 

 see through all its continuous development the constancy 

 of the psychoma, which has its roots in the sensations of 

 each individual. This highest achievement of the work 

 of the plasm in the human brain was, however, first 

 developed in the sensations of the lower animals, and 

 these are in turn connected by a long series of evolu- 

 tionary stages with the simpler forms of sensation that 

 we find in the inorganic elements, and that reveal them- 

 selves in chemical affinity. Albrecht Rau expressly 

 says in his excellent Sensation and Thought (1896) that 

 "perception or sensation is a universal process in nature. 

 This involves, moreover, the possibility of reducing 

 thought itself to this universal process." Recently 

 Ernst Mach has said, in his Analysts of Sensation and 

 the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical, that "sensa- 

 tions are the common elements of all possible physical 

 and psychic occurrences, and consist simply in the dif- 

 ferent mode of the combination of the elements and 

 their dependence on each other." It is true that Mach, 

 in his one-sided emphasis of the subjective element of 

 sensation, goes on to form a similar psychomonism to 

 that of Verworn, Avenarius, and other recent dynamists; 

 but the fundamental character of his system is purely 

 monistic, like the energism of Ostwald. 



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