"startle" also signifies nothing further in ordinary language, only that the process in our human experience is an opposition suddenly occurring between conscious moments, but here takes place between unconscious moments.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that the opposing will is too weak, with respect to the idea impregnated from without, to carry through its negating intention; it is thus an impotent will to which satisfaction is refused, which, consequently, is linked with pain. Thus every process of the becoming conscious is, eo ipso, united with a certain displeasure. This is, as it were, the vexation of the unconscious individual mind at the interloping idea which it must endure and cannot get rid of. It is the bitter medicine without which there is no healing-a medicine, to be sure, which at every moment is swallowed in such very small doses that its bitterness escapes self-perception.—

The peculiar difficulty of this exposition appears to be, how it is possible that matter in the form of the vibrating molecule should be able to plunge into the peace of the unconscious will itself, and that, too, in the double sense; how it has power, as matter, to affect the mind; and how the mind is at all able to enter into communication with anything external? This difficulty thus essentially concerns the old problem of the reciprocal influence of body and mind, which we are here neither able to evade, like Kant and Fichte, by converting the body into a subjective appearance of the mind, nor, as Materialism, by converting the mind into an external appearance resulting from objective material processes, but which we must boldly face, since the (unconscious) mind and matter both pass for real. Already, at the beginning of A. Chap. vii., this problem met us in reference to the medium whereby the will realises itself in the body, especially in the muscular movements; here it is the reverse of the question at which we have arrived, namely, how the mental idea can be conditioned by the organism. There the question reduced itself to this: how the will can influence the movements

of the central nerve-molecule, here to this, how the movements of the central nerve-molecule can influence the idea? There we were obliged to assume the realisation of the unconscious will to be effected by an unconscious one (A. Chap. ii.); here we must contemplate the origin of the conscious idea as brought about by unconscious mental reactions. There the (unconscious) will, directly influencing the molecule, was to be conceived united with unconscious representation; here we must suppose, for the sake of coming to pass of the sensation, an unconscious will conceived as essential factor. The direct reciprocation thus in both cases exists between the forms of movement of central nerve-molecules on the one hand, and unconscious mental functions on the other, in which, as we quite generally know from A. Chap. iv., an union of unconscious will and unconscious idea always takes place.

If, now, matter and unconscious mind were really heterogeneous departments of existence, as the dualistic view prevailing since Descartes in the consciousness of European culture assumes, it would in fact not be apparent how the influxus physicus presupposed in these processes could be possible. Fortunately, however, it will turn out in C. Chap. v. that matter itself is in its essence nothing else whatever but unconscious mind, whose representations are only limited to spatial attraction and repulsion of uniformly varying intensity, and whose volitional manifestations consist in the realising of this limited ideational province. If we at this place anticipate this identity of being subsequently to be demonstrated, it is immediately comprehensible that the reciprocal action of body and soul can no longer, as before, be frustrated by the incapability of bridging the gulf between heterogeneous substances. The psychical will can just as well include in itself in the ideas, which form its content, spatial relations and change of existing spatial relations, as can the atomic will of a cerebral atom. Both can accordingly just as easily collide with one another and conclude their collision by a compromise

as two opposing atomic wills. In both cases the weaker will must in the compromise yield the more the weaker it is than its opponent. When, e.g., there exists the will to a special bodily movement, it will, for the most part, considerably surpass in intensity the single cerebral atomic wills, which would per se follow only their own mechanical laws, and therefore usually sufficiently carry its point. When, on the other hand, such a special will is not aroused and concentrated, there the cerebral atomic wills excited. by the propagated stimulus of the sense-organs produce a relatively considerable effect on the psychical will directed to the organism, i.e., in the compromise resulting from this conflict of will it will now also, on its part, have a relatively considerable share in concession and accommodation, only that this share, on its side, is not, as on the side of matter, presented spatially as objective phenomenon (which merely arises from the difference to be hereafter mentioned in C. Chap. xi., that the directions of the will in the atomic wills exclusively intersect at a single point when prolonged backwards, and thereby produce the appearance of a localisation of the seat of force).

As matter, as objective real phenomenon (i.e., independent of every intelligence intuiting it), could not at all come. to be without two or more atomic wills intersecting and falling into conflict with one another in their volitional manifestations, so also the primitive conscious representation of sensation as subjective ideal phenomenon only becomes possible through precisely the same conflict. An atomic will existing isolated and alone in the world would have no objective existence at all, because the possibility would be wanting to it of self-objectivation, i.e., of bringing its essence to external manifestation. An isolated and sole-existing incorporeal individual mind (assumed per impossibile) would, even if it should display ever so much unconscious will and idea, yet never attain to the subjective manifestation of consciousness. An ad libitum number of atomic wills and of individual minds,

which were, however, isolated from one another, and incapable of thrusting against one another and clashing with their wills, would be altogether in the same position as one existing solitary and alone. Only when the radiating will meets with a resistance by which it is checked or broken can it lead to objective manifestation of existence, to the subjective phenomenon of consciousness. Such a resistance it can, however, only find in its like, in another will with which it has a certain common sphere of action, whilst the tendency and goal of the latter is, in a certain sense, opposed to its own. The common sphere of action makes contact possible; the opposite tendency and goal condition the collision in encounter, which finds its solution in the compromise determined by the content of both. The yielding of each of the colliding wills is now, however, no longer willed by it, but forced, pressed upon it by the other will, which is for it mainly only resistance, and the compromise as result does not correspond to the goal of volition on either side, so that a contrast between the willed and attained arises, just as between the centrifugal function, as it were, of the volition itself and the centripetal rebound on collision. Now, the breaking of the will on the resistance of a foreign will crossing it, or the centripetal rebound, is sensation, and, moreover, as non-satisfaction of the will, pain-sensation. As non

satisfaction of a definite will, i.e., one filled with a definite ideational content, sensation is also qualitatively determined, i.e., sensation characterised by a (here unconscious) ideational content. (Comp. B. Chap. iii.) As qualitatively definite sensation, however, it is element of the conscious idea, and in so far it may even be described as elementary conscious representation. The predicate of consciousness enters into the sensation just through the exhibited contrast, and this contradiction between volition and impression of the resistance answers to what I have above named by an expression transferred from the conscious mental life to the unconscious, the startling of the will at the

intruding idea not willed by itself. Perhaps the more general mode of treatment here entered upon may contribute to the comprehension of the matter, and allow it to be more clearly perceived that the figures there employed were, in fact, only employed as figures.

The difficulty which occasioned this digression is, however, not yet exhausted by the foregoing. In spite of the admitted essential identity of mind and matter, the second question always remains open-how the psychical individual will can at all come in contact with any other will than, in fact, with the atomic will of the brain, since, e.g., it is indeed not able decidedly to touch and to collide with other psychical individual wills? We must here, too, anticipate and acknowledge the future course of the inquiry-that the possibility of such a contact and collision. would not be visible if the individual mind on the one hand and the atoms of matter on the other were discrete substances. It only becomes comprehensible on the assumption that they are merely different functions of one and the same essence, and, moreover, of an unconscious essence; for were it conscious, there would be the common consciousness in all functions, and through the conflict anticipated by the common consciousness, and brought to conclusion in it, as it were, it could no more attain to special consciousness, whereas in the root of one unconscious essence the separated functions have just only the necessary common bond for reciprocal influence, but yet still room enough for the establishment of separated consciousnesses, as it were, on their broken points or jolted peripheral endings. Now it is true a reciprocal influence in general is made possible through the common metaphysical root of the substance, but the latter does not of itself suffice to introduce this coincidence of certain functions at their separated peripheral ends. For that there is also necessary, as a second condition, that the ideational contents of these wills should contain in themselves the common sphere of their contact, just as well as the oppo