7 1 4 Studies in the TJteory of Descent. 



If it is asked, however, how that which in 

 ourselves and in the remainder of the animal 

 world is intellectual and perceptive, which thinks 

 and -wills, is ascribable to a mechanical process of 

 organic development whether the development 

 of the mind can be conceived as resulting from 

 purely mechanical laws ? I answer unhesitatingly 

 in the affirmative with the pure materialist, although 

 I do not agree with him as to the manner in which 

 he derives these phenomena from matter, since 

 thinking and extension are heterogeneous things, 

 and one cannot be considered as a product of the 

 other. But why should not the ancient notion of 

 "conscious matter" given out by Maupertuis and 

 Robinet, not be again entertained, as pointed out 

 in recent times by Fechner ? 9 Would there not 

 thus be found a useful formula for explaining 

 phenomena hitherto quite incomprehensible ? 



Von Hartmann in criticizing himself, designates 

 the sensibility of atoms as an " almost inevitable 

 hypothesis " (p. 62), " inevitable because if sensi- 

 bility were not a general and original property of 

 the constituent elements of matter, it would be 

 absolutely incomprehensible how through its 

 potentiality and integration that sensibility known 

 to us as being possessed by the organism could 



8 See also Fr. Vischer's " Studien iiber den Traum. Beilage 

 zur Augsburger Allgem. Zeitung," April 141)1, 1876. Haeckel 

 also includes this idea in his recent essay already quoted, 

 " Die Perigenesis der Plastidule," Berlin, 1876, p. 38 et seq. 



