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[ Cellular Psychology. See on this my paper on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," in the Deutsche Rundschau (July 1878), reprinted in Part 1, of Collected Popular Lectures; also "The Cell-soul and Cellular Psychology" in my discourse on Freedom in Science and Teaching (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr., 1892, p. 46); Natural History of Creation (8th ed., pp. 444, 777); and Descent of Man (4th ed., pp. 128, 147). See also, Max Verworn, Psycho-physiologische Protisten-Studien (Jena, 1889), and Paul Carus, The Soul of Man: An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology (Chicago, 1891). Among recent attempts to reform psychology on the basis of evolutionary doctrine in a monistic sense, special mention must be made of Georg Heinrich Schneider's Der thierische Wille: Systematische Darstellung und Erklärung der thierischen Triebe und deren Entstehung, Entwickelung und Verbreitung im Thierreiche als Grundlage zu einer vergleichenden Willenslehre[X] (Leipsic, 1880). Compare also his supplementary work, entitled Der menschliche Wille vom Standpunkte der neuen Entwickelungstheorie[XI] (1882); also the Psychology of Herbert Spencer and the new edition of Wilhelm Wundt's Menschen-und Thierseele[XII] (Leipsic, 1892).
Note X "Will in the Lower Animals: a Systematic Exposition and Explanation of Animal Instincts, and their Origin, Development, and Difference in the Animal Kingdom, as Basis of a Comparative Doctrine of Volition."
Note XI "The Human Will from the Standpoint of the Modern Theory of Evolution."
Note XII "Soul in Man and Brute."
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[ Consciousness. The antiquated view of Du Bois-Reymond (1872)—that human consciousness is an unsoluble "world-riddle," a transcendent phenomenon in essential antithesis to all other natural phenomena—continues to be upheld in numerous writings. It is chiefly on this that the dualistic view of the world founds its assertion, that man is an altogether peculiar being, and that his personal soul is immortal; and this is the reason why the "Leipsic ignorabimus-speech" of Du Bois-Reymond has for twenty years been prized as a defence by all representatives of the mythological view of the world, and extolled as a refutation of "monistic dogma." The closing word of the discourse, "ignorabimus," was translated as a present, and this "ignoramus" taken to mean that "we know nothing at all"; or, even worse, that "we can never come to clearness about anything, and any further talk about the matter is idle." The famous "ignorabimus" address remains certainly an important rhetorical work of art; it is a "beautiful sermon," characterised by its highly-finished form and its surprising variety of philosophico-scientific pictures. It is well known, however, that the majority (and especially women) judge a "beautiful sermon" not according to the value of the thoughts embodied in it, but according to its excellence as an aesthetical entertainment. While Du Bois treats his audience at great length to disquisitions on the wondrous performances of the genius of Laplace, he afterwards glides over, the most important part of his subject in eleven short lines, and makes not the slightest further attempt to solve the main question he has to deal with—as to whether the world is really "doubly incomprehensible." For my own part, on the contrary, I have already repeatedly sought to show that the two limits to our knowledge of nature are one and the same; the fact of consciousness and the relation of consciousness to the brain are to us not less, but neither are they more, puzzling, than the fact of seeing and hearing, than the fact of gravitation, than the connection between matter and energy. Compare my discourse on Freedom in Science and Teaching (1878), pp. 78, 82, etc.]
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[ Immortality. Perhaps in no ecclesiastical article of faith is the gross materialistic conception of Christian dogma so evident as in the cherished doctrine of personal immortality, and that of "the resurrection of the body," associated with it. As to this, Savage, in his excellent work on Religion in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine, has well remarked: "One of the standing accusations of the Church against science is that it is materialistic. On this I would like to point out, in passing, that the whole Church-conception concerning a future life has always been, and still is, the purest materialism. It is represented that the material body is to rise again, and inhabit a material heaven." Compare also Ludwig Buchner, Das zunkünftige Leben und die moderne Wissenschaft (Leipsic, 1889); Lester Ward, "Causes of Belief in Immortality" (The Forum, vol. VIII., September 1889); and Paul Carus, The Soul of Man: an Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology (Chicago, 1891). Carus aptly points out the analogy between the ancient and the modern ideas with respect to light, and with respect to the soul. Just as formerly the luminous flame was explained by means of a special fiery matter (phlogiston), so the thinking soul was explained by the hypothesis of a peculiar gaseous soul-substance. We now know that the light of the flame is a sum of electric vibrations of the ether, and the soul a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion-cells. As compared with this scientific conception, the doctrine of immortality of scholastic psychology has about the same value as the materialistic conceptions of the Red Indian about a future life in Schiller's "Nadowessian Death-Song.">[