WHAT LIFE IS 5 



Again he says : 



" The two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter 

 and ether, are not dead, and only moved by extrinsic force, but they 

 are endowed with sensation and will (although, naturally, of the 

 lowest grade) ; they experience an inclination for condensation, a 

 dislike of strain ; they strive after the one and struggle against the 

 other" (p. 78). 



In these two passages we have a self-contradiction in 

 meaning if not in actual words. In the first, he reduces 

 consciousness to phenomena of physics and chemistry ; in 

 the second he declares that both matter and ether possess 

 sensation and will. But in another passage he says he con- 

 ceives " the elementary psychic qualities of sensation and will 

 which may be attributed to atoms to be unconscious " (p. 64). 



It is this quite unintelligible theory of matter and ether 

 possessing sensation and will, being able to strive and 

 struggle and yet be unconscious, which enables him to say : 



" We hold with Goethe that matter cannot exist and be 

 operative without spirit, nor spirit without matter. We adhere 

 firmly to the pure, unequivocal monism of Spinoza : Matter, or 

 infinitely extended substance, and Spirit (or Energy), or sensitive 

 and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes, or 

 principal properties, of the all-embracing essence of the world, the 

 universal substance " (p. 8). 



Here we have yet another contradiction — that the 

 thinking infinite substance is unconscious ! This leads to 

 his theory of the "cell-soul," which is the origin of all 

 consciousness, but which is itself unconscious. This he 

 reiterates emphatically. He tells us that at a certain grade 

 of organisation " consciousness has been gradually evolved 

 from the psychic reflex activity, and now conscious voluntary 

 action appears" (p. 41). Along with these strange con- 

 ceptions, which really explain nothing, he propounds his " Law 

 of Substance " as the one great foundation of the universe. 

 This is merely another name for " persistence of force " or 

 " conservation of energy," yet at the end . of the chapter 

 expounding it he claims that, " in a negative way, it rules 

 out the three central dogmas of metaphysics — God, freedom, 

 and immortality " (p. 83). A little further on he again states 

 his position thus : 



