THE NATURE OF THE SOUL. 91 



organism, especially the brain, the chief organ of 

 psychic activity. The great majority of " psycho- 

 logists" have little or no acquaintance with these 

 anatomical foundations of the soul, and thus it 

 happens that in no other science do we find such 

 contradictions and untenable notions as to its proper 

 meaning and its essential object as are current in 

 psychology. This confusion has become more and 

 more palpable during the last thirty years, in propor- 

 tion as the immense progress of anatomy and physiology 

 has increased our knowledge of the structure and the 

 functions of the chief psychic organ. 



What we call the soul is, in my opinion, a natural 

 phenomenon ; I therefore consider psychology to be a 

 branch of natural science — a section of physiology. 

 Consequently, I must emphatically assert from the 

 commencement that we have no different methods of 

 research for that science than for any of the others ; 

 we have in the first place observation and experiment, 

 in the second place the theory of evolution, and in the 

 third place metaphysical speculation, which seek to 

 penetrate as far as possible into the cryptic nature of 

 the phenomena by inductive and deductive reasoning. 

 However, with a view to a thorough appreciation 

 of the question, we must first of all put clearly 

 before the reader the antithesis of the dualistic and 

 the monistic theories. 



The prevailing conception of the psychic activity, 

 which we contest, considers soul and body to be two 

 distinct entities. These two entities can exist inde- 

 pendently of each other ; there is no intrinsic 

 necessity for their union. The organised body is a 

 mortal, material nature, chemically composed of living 

 protoplasm and its compounds (plasma-products). 



