The Development of Life 45 



psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, 

 the provisional name of c psychoplasm.' 



"The psychic processes are subject to the 

 supreme, all-ruling law of substance ; not even in 

 this province is there a single exception to this 

 highest cosmological law. 



"The dogma of 'free-will,' another essential 

 element of the dualistic psychology, is similarly 

 irreconcilable with the universal law of substance " 



(p. 32). 



" The freedom of the will is not an object for 

 critical scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure 

 dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real 

 existence " (p. 6). 



Nevertheless, he realises that its apparent 

 existence has to be accounted for somehow, 

 and accordingly he adopts the view that has 

 several times occurred to thinkers, viz., that 

 the nucleus of all the faculties enjoyed by a 

 complete organism must be attributed in 

 germ or nucleus to the cells and even to the 

 atoms out of which the organism is built 

 up. 



His speculation as to the formation of a 

 conscious organism, and to the real meaning 

 of its apparent sense of right and wrong and 

 its apparent control over its own acts, runs 



