pseudoscopic phenomena which defy a merely physiological explanation. (Cf. Poggendorf's Annalen, 1860, vol. cx. p. 500 ff., and his recent work, "On the Nature of Comets; Contributions to the History and Theory of Knowledge," 2d ed., Leipzig, 1872.) Further, we are vividly reminded of Wundt's unconscious soul, which works for us like another being, when Bastian begins his "Contributions to Comparative Psychology" (Berlin, 1868) with the words (p. 1), "That it is not we who think, but that it thinks in us, is clear to him who is wont to pay attention to the internal processes." This "it" lies, however, as appears from pp. 120, 121, in particular, in the Unconscious. However, this investigator does not attempt to do more than throw out some rather vague suggestions.

In the current treatment of History, likewise, there are indications that the achievements of Schelling and Hegel (of which we shall speak in Chap. B. x.) have not yet been quite forgotten at the present day. Thus Freitag, says, in the preface to the first volume of his "Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit," 5th ed., vol. i. pp. 23, 24: "All great creations of popular force,―ancestral religion, custom, law, polity,-are to us no longer the outcome of individual effort; they are organic products of a higher life, which in every age only attains manifestation through the medium of the individual, and in all ages gathers up into itself the spiritual wealth of individuals into a mighty whole. Thus one may speak, without intending anything mystical, of a national soul. . . . But no longer conscious, not so purposive (?) and rational as the volition of the individual man, is this life of the people. All that is free and rational in history is the achievement of individuals; the national energy works untiringly with the dark compulsion of a primitive power, and its spiritual productivity sometimes corresponds in a surprising manner to the formative processes of the silently creative forces of nature, which urge stem, leaves, and blossom out of the seed-grain of the plant." It is the same thought

carried further, that underlies the works of Lazarus on "Völkerpsychologie" (cf. my essay, "Ueber das Wesen des Gesammtgeistes," in the "Gesammelte philosophische Abhandlungen," No. v.)

In Esthetics, Carrière in particular has laid stress on the importance of unconscious mental activity, and, supporting himself on Schelling, shows the interposition of conscious and unconscious mental activity to be indispensable for every artistic achievement. An interesting contribution to the Unconscious in Esthetics is made by Rötscher in an essay on the Demonic (in his “Dramaturgische und ästhetische Abhandlungen"). Of the various ways in which the conception of the Unconscious has been turned to account since the appearance of the first edition of the present work, no notice can, of course, be taken here.

II.

HOW DO WE COME TO ASSUME AN AIM IN NATURE?

ONE of the most important and familiar manifestations of the Unconscious is Instinct, and the conception of Instinct rests on that of Purpose. An examination of the latter is therefore indispensable to our inquiry, and as it does not well fit into Section A., I have relegated it to the Introduction. It is possible that the ensuing treatment will incur the reproach of aridity; and any one with an aversion for discussions involving calculations of probability may, if already convinced of the validity of the assumption of an Aim in Nature, pass over the present chapter. But I cannot refrain from adding that the way in which this important problem is here resolved, at least on its formal side, is, so far as I know, both novel and also the only possible one.

The notion of Design has played a highly important part in the speculations of many great thinkers, and has formed the foundation of a considerable portion of their systems; as in the case of Aristotle and Leibniz. Kant was, of course, obliged to deny its reality outside conscious thought, as he did not admit the reality of time (cf. Trendelenburg, "Logische Untersuchungen," chap. viii. 5). Modern Materialism likewise denies its reality, because it refuses to admit the existence of mind apart from an animal brain. In our modern physical science the notion of Design, chiefly through the influence of Bacon, has rightly fallen into discredit, because it had so often served as the convenient resource of indolent reasoners to avoid the arduous search after efficient causes, and because in

the part of natural science concerned with matter alone, Design as a spiritual cause must necessarily be excluded. Spinoza was completely blinded to the fact of Purpose in Nature, because he believed final causality to be in contradiction with logical necessity, whereas it is in truth identical with it (Chap. C. xv. 3). Darwinism denies adaptation in Nature, not as fact, it is true, but as principle, and thinks itself able to comprehend the fact as result of mindless causality; as if Causality itself were anything more than a logical necessity, discernible by us only as fact (not on the side of the internal principle), and as if the adaptation, actually manifested as result at the end. of a series of events, must not have been from the very first the prius of these adjustments as plan or principle! But if, on the one hand, so great and honest a spirit as Spinoza could look in Nature's face and deny Design, if, on the other hand, Purpose seems to others to play a part so important, and even the freethinking Voltaire does not venture to explain away the evidence of an Aim in Nature, however inconvenient and incompatible with the rest of his opinions its admission might be, there must indeed be something very peculiar about the idea.

The notion of a purposed End is derived in the first instance from the experience of our own conscious mental activity. My end is a future event imagined and willed by me, the realisation of which I am not in a position to bring about directly, but only through a chain of causation (means). If I do not imagine the future occurrence, it does not exist for me; if I do not will it, I do not purpose it; it is indifferent or repugnant to me. If I can directly realise it, the causal link, the means, falls away, and along with it disappears also the notion of a designed end (which is only the term of a relation. the other member of which is the concept, means), for action then follows immediately upon volition. When I see that I am not able to realise my will directly, and recognise the means as efficient cause of the end, the

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willing of the end becomes to me a motive, i.e., efficient cause for the willing of the means; this in its turn becomes efficient cause for the realisation of the means through my act, and the realised means becomes efficient cause of the realisation of the end. Thus we have a triple causality with the four terms: Willing of the end, willing of the means, realising of the means, realising of the end. Only in rare cases is all this confined to the purely subjective mental sphere, e.g., in the composition of a poem, the elaboration in the mind of any artistic conception, or other mental effort. More commonly we find three of the four different modes of causality immediately presented, namely, causality between mental and mental event (willing of the end, willing of the means), mental and material event (willing and realisation of the means), and between material and material event (meansand end). The fourth kind of causality too, that between material and mental event, also often occurs; it lies then, however, before the beginning of our reflection in the motivation of the willing of the end through impressions of sense. It is, therefore, evident that the union of willed and realised end, or final causation, is by no means something existing by the side of or even despite causality, but that it is only a particular combination of different kinds of causality, such that the first and last terms are identical, only the one ideal and the other real, the one presented in the willed idea, the other in reality. Far from destroying the exceptionless character of the law of causation, it rather presupposes it, and that too not only between matter and matter, but also between mind and matter, and mind and mind. It denies freedom to the single empirical mental act, and brings it too under the necessity of the law of causality. This may be the first word towards coming to an understanding with the opponents of the doctrine of final causes.

Let us assume that M has been observed to be an efficient cause of Z, and let all the material circumstances

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