CHAP. XIV.] PSYCHOPHYSIK. 461 



make out from what he says on what day of that year the 

 event took place, or why my parents and not some one else 

 found me under a gooseberry bush ; or, indeed, why I should 

 have any part or lot in family matters, from Adam's first 

 sin down to my father's last name. 



Mr. Francis Galton tells me that I am developed from 

 structureless germs contributed not only by my two parents 

 but by their remotest ancestors centuries ago. My exist- 

 ence, therefore, does not begin abruptly, but tails off as an 

 exponential function of t does for negative values of that 

 variable. My local existence, however, though at present 

 confined within the periphractic region of my skin, was in 

 former times discontinuous as regards space, being carried 

 about by two, four, or more, distinct human beings. 



Dr. Julius Mtiller tells me that by an analysis of my 

 conscience I shall come to a very different result, namely, 

 that I existed (if, indeed, the fact can be expressed by a 

 past tense and not a pure aorist), in an extra-temporal state, 

 and that in that state I freely determined myself to choose 

 evil rather than good. 



He does not say I can remember this transaction. The 

 conviction I am to acquire of it is not to be an experimental 

 or empirical consciousness, but a speculative or philosophical 

 knowledge. 



Since, according to Miiller's theory, this extra-temporal 

 decision is perfectly free, and since it would be difficult to 

 predicate freedom of a choice which is invariably on one side, 

 he is obliged to assert that in the extra-temporal state some 

 of our species must have chosen the better part. But he has 

 also to maintain that all of us who are born into this world 

 by ordinary generation have already chosen the worse part. 



Hence, though he does not say so, he makes the extra- 

 temporal fall a condition of our being born into this world. 

 Whether those of us who make the better choice are born 

 into some other world, or whether, so long as they remain 

 unfallen, they continue in the extra-temporal state a state 

 certainly not higher but rather more undeveloped than that 

 of time Mliller does not say. 



