THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM. 15 



of our planetary system ; and as our mother-earth is 

 a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, 

 so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in 

 the perishable framework of organic nature. 



Nothing seems to me better adapted than this 

 magnificent cosmological perspective to give us the 

 proper standard and the broad outlook which we need 

 in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. 

 It not only clearly indicates the true place of man in 

 nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's 

 supreme importance, and the arrogance with which he 

 Bats himself apart from the illimitable universe, and 

 exalts himself to the position of its most valuable 

 element. This boundless presumption of conceited 

 man has misled him into making himself " the image 

 of God," claiming an " eternal life," for his ephemeral 

 personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited 

 u freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of 

 Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant 

 assumption of divinity. Only when we have aban- 

 doned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct 

 cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the 

 solution of the " riddles of the universe." 



The uneducated member of a civilised community 

 is surrounded with countless enigmas at every step, 

 just as truly as the savage. Their number, however, 

 decreases with every stride of civilisation and of 

 science ; and the monistic philosophy is ultimately 

 confronted with but one simple and comprehensive 

 enigma — the ''problem of substance." Still, we 

 may find it useful to include a certain number of 

 problems under that title. In the famous speech 

 which Emil du Bois-Eeymond delivered in 1880, in 

 the Leibnitz session of the Berlin Academy of 



