decidedly to the positive sciences than any of the earlier systems,87 and which in this respect repeats all the errors of Schelling and Hegel in a much coarser and more palpable shape.

87 It will hardly be necessary for our readers once more to disturb the illusion that the 'Philosophie des Unbewussten' contains "speculative results on the inductive scientific method." There can hardly be an

other modern book in which the scientific material swept together stands in such flagrant contrast to all the essential principles of scientific method.

THIRD SECTION.

THE NATURAL SCIENCES

Continued.

MAN AND THE SOUL.

CHAPTER I.

THE RELATION OF MAN TO THE ANIMAL WORLD.

THROUGH the whole History of Materialism runs this marked feature that cosmical questions gradually lose in interest, while anthropological questions excite an increasing eagerness of controversy. It may, indeed, appear that this anthropological aspect of Materialism reached its highest point in the last century; for the magnificent discoveries of modern times in the fields of chemistry, physics, geology, and astronomy have brought forward a series of questions upon which Materialism had to take up a distinct attitude. This might, however, happen without any need for essentially new principles or startling and strife-provoking views. On the other hand, anthropology, too, has made the most astonishing progress; partly, it is true, in departments which have little to do with the problem of Materialism. We have got rid of the phantoms of disease, have begun to shake a little medical ecclesiasticism, and by means of comparative and experimental physiology have reached surprising results

as to the functions of the most important internal organs. In those departments, however, which stand most closely related to the questions of Materialism, recent discoveries have shown the inadequacy of earlier conceptions, without substituting a new theory upon which Materialism might securely rest itself. The nervous system in its activity is no longer such a mystery to us as it was-or, indeed, must have been for the Materialists of last century. The brain was in some respects better understood than before; it was with gigantic industry anatomised, measured, weighed, analysed, microscopically examined, studied in morbid conditions, compared with the brain of animals, and in animals submitted to experiment; but as to the physiological connexion and the mode of action of its parts, we have never succeeded in propounding a comprehensive hypothesis; there is all the more idle talk, and in this, of course, the Materialists are not behindhand. A department which offered them a better opportunity is that of molecular change, as indeed generally the application of physics and chemistry to the functions of the living organism. Here, indeed, many of the results of professedly exact research still call for a severely winnowing criticism: yet, on the whole, we may consider successful the attempt to exhibit the living man, as he is externally given us, like all organic and inorganic bodies, as a product of the forces operating throughout nature. An extremely important department, the physiology of the sense-organs, has, on the other hand, produced decisive. grounds for the refutation of Materialism; but it has, as yet, been little drawn into the debate, because the opponents of Materialism partly cannot employ this kind of refutation for their purposes, but partly because they do not possess the requisite knowledge. Meanwhile the attempt has also been made to submit psychology to a scientific, and even a mathematical and mechanical mode of treatment. In psycho-physics and moral statistics sciences have been established which appear to lend sup