"The psychic processes are subject to the supreme, all-ruling law of substance; not even in this province is there a single exception to this highest cosmological law.
"The dogma of 'free-will,' another essential element of the dualistic psychology, is similarly irreconcilable with the universal law of substance" (p. 32).
"The freedom of the will is not an object for critical scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real existence" (p. 6).
Nevertheless, he realises that its apparent existence has to be accounted for somehow, and accordingly he adopts the view that has several times occurred to thinkers, viz., that the nucleus of all the faculties enjoyed by a complete organism must be attributed in germ or nucleus to the cells and even to the atoms out of which the organism is built up.
His speculation as to the formation of a conscious organism, and to the real meaning of its apparent sense of right and wrong and its apparent control over its own acts, runs as follows, the will being reduced to attraction and repulsion between the atoms:—
"Vogt's pyknotic theory of substance is that minute parts of the universal substance, the centres of condensation, which might be called pyknatoms, correspond in general to the ultimate separate atoms of the kinetic theory; they differ, however, very considerably in that they are credited with sensation and inclination (or will-movement of the simplest form), with souls, in a certain sense,—in harmony with the old theory of Empedocles of the 'loves and hatreds of the elements.'
"Moreover, these 'atoms with souls' do not float in empty space, but in the continuous, extremely attenuated, intermediate substance, which represents the uncondensed portion of the primitive matter" (p. 77).
"'Attraction' and 'repulsion' seem to be the sources of will—that momentous element of the soul which determines the character of the individual" (p. 45).
"The positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of potential energy; the negative imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus gathers the utmost amount of actual energy.
"I think that this pyknotic theory of substance will prove more acceptable to every biologist who is convinced of the unity of nature than the kinetic theory which prevails in physics to-day" (p. 78).