OF THE SOUL. 261 



thinkers who had approached the subject from a purely 

 naturalistic point of view. Thus we see that the age 

 was ripe for a discussion of the soul problem, die 45. 



^ Die Seelen- 



Seelenfrage. Scientific, educational, psychological, phil- •'■age- 

 osophical, and religious interests combined to place it 

 in the foreground. It was taken up, as I stated 

 above, in a conservative spirit, as a question of the 

 day, by Eudolf Wagner himself, in an address which 

 he delivered at the meeting of the German Association 

 of Sciences, which took place at Gottingen in the year 

 1854. The challenge which was thus thrown out was 

 taken up by Karl Vogt,^ who, in various pamphlets 

 and by characteristic phrases, stigmatised the position 

 as dualistic and untenable, spoke of the genuine 

 Gottingen Seelensuhstanz, and opened the long campaign 

 which goes under the name of the materialistic con- 

 troversy. In it thinkers of all shades and opinions 

 took part. It resulted in an enormous popular litera- 

 ture, in which the extreme watchwords of the naturalistic 

 school played a great part, being, if not really more 

 intelligible, still seemingly more easily assimilated by 

 the popular mind. In many instances they allied them- 

 selves with political and social radicalism, and, later on, 

 with the growing industrialism and the newly - born 

 material prosperity of the German nation, which they 

 supplied with a shallow but convenient creed. 



I have in the foregoing attempted to show how the 

 great psychological problems were approached in the 

 three different countries during the course of the first 



^ See for details of the various I note to page 197 in the early part 

 authors and their publications the I of this chapter. 



