CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 



the difficulty which many philosophers and biologists 

 experience in solving the problem of the first origin 

 of consciousness. It is a phenomenon of so peculiar 

 a character that a derivation of it from other psychic 

 functions seems extremely hazardous. It seemed, 

 therefore, the easiest way out of the difficulty to 

 conceive it as an inherent property of all matter, like 

 gravitation or chemical affinity. On that hypothesis 

 there would be as many forms of this original con- 

 sciousness as there are chemical elements ; each atom 

 of hydrogen would have its hydrogenic consciousness, 

 each atom of carbon its carbonic consciousness, and 

 so forth. There are philosophers, even, who ascribe 

 consciousness to the four elements of Empedocles, the 

 union of which, by " love and hate," produces the 

 totality of things. 



Personally, I have never subscribed to this hypo- 

 thesis of atomic consciousness. 1 emphasize the point 

 because Emil du Bois-Reymond has attributed it to 

 me. In the controversy I had with him (1880) he 

 violently attacked my " pernicious and false philo- 

 sophy," and contended that I had, in my paper on 

 " The Perigenesis of the Plastidule," " laid it down 

 as a metaphysical axiom that every atom has its 

 individual consciousness." On the contrary, I ex- 

 plicitly stated that I conceive the elementary 

 psychic qualities of sensation and will, which may 

 be attributed to atoms, to be unconscious — just as 

 unconscious as the elementary memory which I, in 

 company with that distinguished physiologist, Ewald 

 Hering, consider to be "a common function of all 

 organised matter " — or, more correctly, " living sub- 

 stance." Du Bois-Reymond curiously confuses " soul " 

 and " consciousness " : whether from oversight or not 



