16 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



Sciences, he distinguished seven world-enigmas, which 

 he enumerated as follows : (1) The nature of matter 

 and force. (2) The origin of motion. (3) The origin 

 of life. (4) The (apparently preordained) orderly 

 arrangement of nature. (5) The origin of simple 

 sensation and consciousness. (6) Rational thought, 

 and the origin of the cognate faculty, speech. (7) The 

 question of the freedom of the will. Three of these 

 seven enigmas are considered by the orator of the 

 Berlin Academy to be entirely transcendental and 

 insoluble — they are the first, second, and fifth ; three 

 others (the third, fourth, and sixth) he considers to 

 be capable of solution, though extremely difficult ; as 

 to the seventh and last " world-enigma," the freedom 

 of the will, which is one of the greatest practical 

 importance, he remains undecided. 



As my monism differs materially from that of the 

 Berlin orator, and as his idea of the " seven great 

 enigmas " has been very widely accepted, it may be 

 useful to indicate their true position at once. In my 

 opinion the three transcendental problems (1, 2, and 

 5) are settled by our conception of substance (vide 

 chap, xii.) ; the three which he considers difficult, 

 though soluble (3, 4, and 6), are decisively answered 

 by our modern theory of evolution ; the seventh and 

 last, 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. 



The means and methods we have chosen for attaining 

 the solution of the great enigma do not differ, on the 

 whole, from those of all purely scientific investigation 

 — firstly, experience ; secondly, inference. Scientific 

 experience comes to us by observation and experiment, 

 which involve the activity of our sense-organs in the 



