tion it cannot be this, otherwise it too would attain to consciousness, as will be shown in the third chapter; consequently for this material substratum there only remains the unconscious will. This perfectly accords with our experience, for everywhere it is the interest, the definite will, which, directed to the particular case, compels the idea into being. The particular will, however, besides the power of volition, shows also a definite (ideational) content, and this content it is which determines the quality or essence of the unconscious idea of the next moment, which it, however, could not determine if its existence. were not demanded by the willing of the foregoing moment, and made possible by the persistence of the form of volition even up to this moment.-I will here once more add the remark, that since the act immediately follows the will, there can be no spiritual activity in the Unconscious save at the moment of the commencing act. Even when the will is too weak for the realisation of its content and for overcoming the present resistance, this holds good; for either the deed consists in the abortive attempt, or the Unconscious immediately thinks the appropriate preparatory means instead of the end. But, possibly repeated impulses on the part of the Unconscious may be requisite, namely, when the mechanical progress of the act stumbles upon obstacles which must be overpowered by modified action.

An objection might here be raised, namely, that the Unconscious wills only the final results, but must think the whole thought-process leading to these results; but whoever has attentively read No. 4 of this chapter will have already found there the answer to this objection. Unconscious thought embraces all the terms of a process, reason and consequent, cause and effect, means and end, &c., in a single moment, and thinks them, not before, beside, or beyond, but in the result itself; it never thinks them except through the result. Therefore, this thinking cannot be regarded as a special thinking outside the result; it is

rather implicitly contained in the thinking of the result, without ever being explicated; consequently the result is that which is alone thought in our ordinary sense, and the proposition holds that only that can be unconsciously thought which is willed. Moreover, even in the ordinary category of unconscious thought, in means and end, one may say that the end implicitly thought in the idea of the willed means is also implicitly willed.

Voli

According to the foregoing, the sole activity of the Unconscious consists in willing, and the unconscious representation filling the will is only a non-temporal content, merely dragged along with it, as it were, into time. tion and activity are accordingly identical or reciprocal notions. Only through them is Time posited; only through them is the idea hurled from potential into actual being, from being in the essence into being in the phenomenon, and therewith into time. Quite otherwise is it with the conscious idea, which is a product of different factors, of which one, the cerebral vibrations, is from the first subject to duration.

II.

BRAIN AND GANGLIA AS CONDITIONS OF ANIMAL

CONSCIOUSNESS.

ALMOST all naturalists, physiologists, and physicians are materialists, and the more the knowledge and method of physics and physiology is diffused among the educated public, the more does the materialistic view of the world gain ground. What is the cause of this? The simplicity and impressive evidentness of the facts on which the materialistic conception of the animal and human soul, the only spiritual being known to us, is supported. Only those unacquainted with these facts, as the unscientific multitude, or the learned world without physical and physiological knowledge, or those who approach these facts with the preconceived opinions of religious or philosophic systems, can alone remain outside their influence; they must absolutely convince every unprejudiced thinking man, because they need only to be taken just as they are; they declare their meaning with such naive. plainness that it is not at all necessary to look for it. And this naive clearness and directness, this forcible selfevidence, which can only be denied with violence, this it is which secures for the materialistic conception of the mind so great a superiority over the difficult and subtle deductions and probabilities, over the arbitrary assumptions and often distorted consequences, of the spiritualistic psychology, which induces all clear heads averse to mystiphilosophic speculation to enrol themselves under the banner of Materialism, which is simple as the Nature that teaches it, and clear and precise in all its correct consequences as this its august mother. That Materialism

thereby offends the religious systems can in our time only gain it the more adherents; but that it contradicts speculative philosophy, that does not trouble it at all; for how few men have a speculative need; how far fewer still philosophical culture? Accordingly Materialism has neither the need nor the capacity to investigate the not-understood abstractions, such as force, matter, &c., of which its system consists, and it comports itself to the higher questions of philosophy partly sceptically, in that it denies that their solution lies on this side the limits of the human understanding, partly it denies the title of these questions altogether. Thus it feels quite comfortable in its skin in all directions, and is perfectly contented with the daily progressive discoveries of the natural sciences, in the good faith that everything which man calls experience must be derived from the pursuit of the special sciences. It is, accordingly, no wonder that Materialism gains whereas Philosophy loses ground; for only a philosophy which takes full account of all the results of the natural sciences, and accepts without reservation the perfectly legitimate point of departure of Materialism, only such a philosophy can hope to make a stand against Materialism, if at the same time it fulfils the condition of being universally intelligible, which the philosophy of Identity and absolute Idealism unfortunately is not.

The first attempt to receive Materialism into Philosophy in an intelligible fashion was made by Schopenhauer, and not the least part both of his merit and of his growing popularity is due to this attempt. But his compromise was unsatisfactory; it allowed Materialism the intellect, and reserved to speculation the will. This violent dismembering is his weak point; for if once conscious ideation and thought is handed over to Materialism, it has full right to claim also conscious feeling, and therewith conscious desire and volition, since the physiological phenomena have the same expression for all conscious activities of mind. It is entirely inconsequent of Schopenhauer to refer the stores

of memory, together with the intellectual foundations, talents, and aptitudes of the individual, to the constitution of the brain, and to exclude from the same and to hypostatise as an individual metaphysical essence, in defiance of his fundamental monistic principle, the character of the individual, which just as easily, if not more easily, is capable of such an explanation. In fact, there are no means of overturning the first fundamental proposition of Materialism, "All conscious mental activity can only come to pass by normal function of the brain," but by the ignoring or subtle explaining away of facts. But now, as long as any one knows or will know no other than conscious mental activity, this proposition asserts, "All mental activity can only come to pass through brain function." The conclusion is obvious: "Either all mental activity is pure function of the brain, or a product of brain function and something else, which is inherently incapable of expression, but is purely potential, and only attains expression in and by the normal brain function, which now appears as mental activity." It is evident that a decision between these alternatives, all others being laid aside as useless, meaningless ballast, is hardly to be evaded. Quite otherwise does the matter appear as soon as one already recognises unconscious mental action as the original and primary form, without whose assistance conscious mental activity would be paralysed. Then the proposition only says, "Conscious mental activity can only take place through the function of the brain." With respect to unconscious mental activity, on the other hand, it says nothing at all; it remains, therefore, since all the phenomena demonstrate their independence of brain functions, as something self-dependent, and only the form of consciousness appears conditioned by matter.

We pass on now briefly to present the facts, the theoretical expression for which is the above proposition.

I. The brain is in formal and material respects the highest product of organic formative activity.