Translation from Hering 65 



subjected to the same inflexible laws as stones and plants — 

 a material combination, the outward and inward move- 

 ments of which interact as cause and effect, and are in as 

 close connection with each other and with their surround- 

 ings as the working of a machine with the revolutions 

 of the wheels that compose it. 



Neither sensation, nor idea, nor yet conscious will, can 

 form a link in this chain of material occurrences which 

 make up the physical life of an organism. If I am asked 

 a question and reply to it, the material process which the 

 nerve fibre conveys from the organ of hearing to the 

 brain must travel through my brain as an actual and 

 material process before it can reach the nerves which will 

 act upon my organs of speech. It cannot, on reaching 

 a given place in the brain, change then and there into an 

 immaterial something, and turn up again some time 

 afterwards in another part of the brain as a material process. 

 The traveller in the desert might as well hope, before he 

 again goes forth into the wilderness of reality, to take 

 rest and refreshment in the oasis with which the Fata 

 Morgana illudes him ; or as well might a prisoner hope to 

 escape from his prison through a door reflected in a mirror. 



So much for the physiologist in his capacity of pure 

 physicist. As long as he remains behind the scenes in 

 painful exploration of the details of the machinery — as 

 long as he only observes the action of the players from 

 behind the stage — so long will he miss the spirit of the 

 performance, which is, nevertheless, caught easily by one 

 who sees it from the front. May he not, then, for once 

 in a way, be allowed to change his standpoint ? True, 

 he came not to see the representation of an imaginary 

 world ; he is in search of the actual ; but surely it must 

 help him to a comprehension of the dramatic apparatus 

 itself, and of the manner in which it is worked, if he were 

 to view its action from in front as well as from behind, 

 or at least allow himself to hear what sober-minded spec- 

 tators can tell him upon the subject. 



