"First simple monera are formed by spontaneous generation, and from these arise unicellular protists.... From these unicellular protists arise, in the further course of evolution, first social cell-communities, and subsequently tissue-forming plants and animals" (p. 131).
In this hypothesis of automatic origin by the agency of matter and energy alone, he could probably find many biologists to agree with him speculatively; but he goes further than some of them, for he does not limit the automatic or material development to animal and vegetable life alone: he throws automatic consciousness in, too:—
"The 'cellular theory' ... has given us the first true interpretation of the physical, chemical, and even the psychological, processes of life" (p. 1).
"Consciousness, thought, and speculation are functions of the ganglionic cells of the cortex of the brain" (p. 6).
"The peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is not, as du Bois-Reymond and the dualistic school would have us believe, a completely 'transcendental' problem: it is, as I showed thirty-three years ago, a physiological problem, and as such, must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry" (p. 65).
Holding such a view concerning consciousness, in the teeth of the general philosophic opinion of to-day, it is natural to find that of orthodox psychology and psychologists he is contemptuous:—
"Most of our so-called 'psychologists' have little or no knowledge of these indispensable foundations of anthropology—anatomy, histology, ontogeny, and physiology.... Hence it is that most of the psychological literature of the day is so much waste-paper" (p. 34).
"What we call the soul is, in my opinion, a natural phenomenon; I therefore consider psychology to be a branch of natural science—a section of physiology. Consequently, I must emphatically assert from the commencement that we have no different methods of research for that science than for any of the others" (p. 32).
In this difficult Science of Psychology he evidently feels himself quite at home. He assumes easily and gratuitously that there is a material substance at the root of all mental processes whatever—called by Clifford 'mind-stuff,' (see, however, Chapter IV. below,)—and he then proceeds to lay down the law concerning ancient difficulties as follows:—
"We shall give to this material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of 'psychoplasm.'