So far as the attempts to solve these four questions start from the results of natural science and, from this starting-point of the known, try to solve the unknown, we will have to assign them in the encyclopædic classification of the sciences, to that department of philosophy which treats the doctrines of nature; and since our whole investigation starts from the Darwinian theories, and only tries to treat of what is properly connected with them, the attempts to solve these four questions offer themselves as the naturo-philosophic supplements of the Darwinian-theories.
After concluding our treatment of them, we shall have to speak of still another view, which presupposes all these attempts at solution to be wholly or nearly
successful, and draws an inference from them which no longer belongs to the realm of natural science, but is a purely metaphysical hypothesis; it is the abolition of the idea of design in nature. In connection with this, finally, we shall have to discuss the name which this view has lately assumed, viz: "Monism."
Whatever further questions may arise, belong either to the special subdivisions of natural science and philosophy, or to theological and ethical problems.
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURO-PHILOSOPHIC SUPPLEMENTS OF THE DARWINIAN THEORIES.
§ 1. The Origin of Self-Consciousness and of Free Moral Self-Determination.
If sensation, and its most developed form, consciousness, is a reflex of the material in something immaterial, which feels itself a unit in contrast to the material, and, where sensation rises into consciousness, is opposed as a unit to the material—self-consciousness again is the reflex of this sentient and conscious subject in a new and still higher immaterial unity; and this again makes this sentient and conscious subject, together with the sum of its feelings and ideas, its object, changing it from a sentient and conscious subject into a felt and presented object. Therefore it is clear, and will be the result of all thought upon these concepts, that as with sensation and consciousness, so also with self-consciousness, something new always comes into existence—a higher category of being, different from the merely material. The first is the form of being of the animal world; the latter that of mankind.