OF REALITY. 



519 



clined to be satisfied with poetical constructions ; and 

 thus it came about that the really important and original 

 ideas of Fechner made little impression, that he did 

 not count as a systematic philosopher at all, and that 

 he was known outside of his purely scientific works 

 mainly as a humorous writer.^ His name appeared in 



^ Before the year 1860, when the 

 ' Elements of Psycho-Physics ' were 

 publishen, Fechner was known 

 partly through purely scientific 

 works (notably his translations of 

 Biot's ' Physics ' and Thenard's 

 'Chemistry '), partly through hum- 

 orous writings (under the pseudo- 

 nym of Dr Mises), and some semi- 

 religious Tracts ('Das Biichlein vom 

 Leben nach dem T(jde,' 1836 ; 

 ' Ueber das Hochste Gut,' 1846 ; 

 ' Nanna oder iiber das Seelen- 

 leben der Pflauzen,' 1848) ; lastly 

 tlnough his larger work ('Zenda- 

 vesta oder iiber die Dinge des 

 Himmels und des Jenseits,' 3 

 parts, 1851). In the latter he 

 expounds in full earnest what 

 earlier writings had only hinted 

 at or fancifully put forward — 

 viz., that the earth, as a higher 

 spiritual Being, is the bearer of 

 human consciousness, the inter- 

 mediate link between the human 

 and the Divine Being. Tiie stars 

 also are conscious beings. This 

 appears absurd, but Fechner is 

 certain of it : " Either my thesis 

 or the prevailing ideas are incor- 

 rect, and must in consequence be 

 altered. I maintain and demand the 

 latter " ( ' Zendavesta, ' Introduction). 

 This doctrine is itself not new, only 

 f.irgotten ; the ancient religion of 

 nature in the ' Zendavesta ' is to 

 be revived on the foundation of 

 modern natural knowledge. Zenda- 

 vesta means the "living word." 

 The new Zendavesta is to be the 

 word which gives life to Nature. 

 See Kurd Lasswitz (' Gustav 

 Theodor Fechner,' 1896), who has 



had the merit of giving, for the 

 fii'st time, a coherent statement 

 of Fechner's doctrine, removing it 

 from the sphere of mere interest- 

 ing, suggestive, and fanciful writ- 

 ing to the rank of a caiefully 

 thought-out philosophical specula- 

 tion well wortiiy of separate study 

 and replete with many valuable 

 suggestions. Accordingly we liud 

 that in quite recent philosophy 

 Fechner's ideas have become fruit- 

 ful. Thus Fr. Paulsen, in his 

 well-known ' Introduction to Phil- 

 osophy,' acknowledges his indebt- 

 edness to Fechner ; and HoflFdiug, 

 in his ' History of Philosophy ' 

 (Eng. transl., vol. ii. p. 524), treats 

 of him, together with Lotze, as 

 " The ' Dioscuri ' of German phil- 

 osophy in the latter half of our 

 century. They are alike in ideal- 

 istic tendency, in wide scientific 

 knowledge, in poetic sense, and 

 in the desire for a unified con- 

 ception of the world. They pur- 

 sued kindred ends, although to a 

 certain extent along different paths. 

 . . . Fechner — like Kepler, whom 

 he strikingly resembles — is an in- 

 teresting example of how bold and 

 imaginative speculations may lead 

 to positive and exact results, pro- 

 vided that the thinker never loses 

 sight of his fundamental thought, 

 and is able to divest it of its 

 mystical swaddling - bands. Just 

 as Kepler was gradually led from 

 mystical speculations to the dis- 

 covery of the famous laws, which 

 satisfied his longing to find definite 

 mathematical relations obtaining in 

 the real world, so Fechner's bold 



