Chapter XX: Part III: closes with reference to "an approximately complete adjustment (4)

We must thus conclude, leaving one great difficulty unsolved; and this is because this difficulty is intrinsically insoluble; there is no absolute coincidence between virtue and happiness. The scientific moralist has to do with facts; beyond these he cannot go. From the scientific point of view, we may hold that evolution implies progress, and that progress implies a solution of many discords and an extirpation of many evils; but there is no reason for supposing that all evil will be extirpated and perfect harmony attained. New sensibilities bring with them new dangers; even sympathy, when not guided by knowledge, may lead to rash changes productive of evil as well as good. To improve, whether for the race or the individual, whether in knowledge or in sympathy, is to be put in a position where a new set of experiments has to be tried, and experience to be bought at the price of pain.

It is true that beyond the science lies the art; we must incite the intrinsic motives to good through the pressure of the social factor. A certain disadvantage to the individual cannot form a reason for our not endeavoring to make him moral as far as possible; the good of society as a whole is involved; and even the man who is himself immoral sees the advantage of living in a moral medium, and would prefer that the world at large should not be guided by his own principles.

B. CARNERI

Carneri begins his book on "Morality and Darwinism" ("Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus," 1871), with the rejection of the older Spiritualism in favor of Idealism, on the ground that modern investigation has made it impossible for philosophy to assume any foundation but one sanctioned by science; and with a rejection of dualism in favor of monism, on the ground that the investigations of Wundt and others have shown the psychical and the physical to be identical.

Instinct is defined by Carneri as thought upon the standpoint of mere sensation, but following the laws of the same logic as governs conscious thought. There is, thus, according to his view, no exception to be taken to the conception which represents instinct as the action of mental force, the difference between it and human reason as one of degree only. It is nevertheless a confusion which ascribes reason to the animals. Even their intelligence is one-sided, since it does not reach self-consciousness, and it is not to be regarded as an unqualified improvement upon instinct, since the latter loses both in intensity and in certainty of action when it no longer governs undisturbed by other influences: only such animals as are endowed with intelligence ever eat of injurious food. In human beings instinct has almost disappeared;--almost, we say, since savages do many things in an instinctive manner, and even civilized men at times perform acts which, on account of the exceeding rapidity of their execution, cannot be regarded as the results of reflection. Instinct may be compared to polarity in magnetism, according to which opposites are attracted. Instinct was evolved by natural selection. But intelligence and judgment are doubtless also to be found even far down in the scale of species. The brute consciousness is, nevertheless, only a transition-stage, in which the individual is still lost in the species; and, as such, it is not to be confused with human reason. Consciousness in the brutes is purely subjective, a consciousness "fuer sich"; while in human beings it is consciousness "an und fuer sich," consciousness that becomes subject-object through the concepts developed by language.

Man is as unconditionally subject to the law of causality, psychically and physically, as the merest atom. There is no such thing as chance; but in this very fact lies a consolation. In the concept of individualization in its broadest sense, is included the conception of freedom, and in the very nature of man there is an indestructible impulse to freedom; his being, as self-conscious, is identical with the latter impulse. This increases with increasing civilization, and has finally become the problem by the solution of which alone man can attain to self-satisfaction. It is true that the power of choice is inconsistent with the law of causality; but in the manner in which the man, as a thinking being, takes his stand over against the species, he becomes a person, an individuality. As one of the species, he shares the characteristics of the species, is an expression of the species-idea, and his action is determined outwardly by things; but it is so determined only mediately by means of thought, of concepts; these are the immediate determinants. Hence, man's relation to things is a different one according to the grade of his knowledge. In so far as this is adequate, that is, corresponds to the truth of actuality, his relation is an active one; in so far as it is, on the contrary, inadequate, the relation is a passive one.

Character is inborn and can never be effaced but only clarified, though this least through the bitter experience of the results of action. As the horse loses his sure-footedness after one fall, and falls again more easily, so we lose, through many a deed, the motive furnished by the consciousness of never having committed it, and have a greater tendency to repeat it. If an act has bad results, it is more likely that an attempt to avoid these results by cunning will be made at later opportunities for the act, than that the act itself will be avoided. And even if it were to be avoided, such avoidance would not constitute an improvement of the character; the latter would but hide itself under a mask to reappear at the first prospect of exemption from punishment. That which alone can modify character is a considerable extension of knowledge. For, since all things influence us only in proportion to the worth we attribute to them, their power over us must differ according to the correctness or incorrectness of our judgment. Therefore, the more we regard things in the light of their actual worth and hence also in their relations to each other, the more our character, beholding in these relations the general as the true, will incline to avoid extremes in action. A preponderantly sensual character remains such through life; but there is no doubt that a careful education, which makes it acquainted with nobler principles and develops a sensibility to true beauty, may ennoble it; while, if the education is, on the contrary, neglected, it must sink deeper and deeper into the mire of coarseness and vulgarity.

Character is the sum of its "affections," that is, of all states and motions of the disposition. These are divisible into "passions,"--included under selfishness, which is the general, all-embracing passion,--and the active conditions of existence. These two divisions are also identical with pain and pleasure, passion with pain, and activity with pleasure. All desires have their root in the primary instinct of self-preservation and self-propagation, the instinct of self-propagation being only the racial form of the instinct of self-preservation. The instinct of self-propagation is the highest of all the passions, yet, as Spinoza says, every form of love which recognizes another cause than mental freedom is easily turned to hate,--if it is not already a sort of madness, nourished rather by discord than concord. The various forms of family love, the love of country, and friendship, noble sisters of love in the narrower sense, result in desirable activity only as they exist in the form of concepts. Civilization is nothing but the struggle of inadequate and adequate concepts, in which, as in the struggle for existence in nature, only that is triumphant which, instead of assuming a position of separation, makes the general and the conditions of existence its own; so that charity in the widest sense of the term is, of all humane feelings, that to which the palm has been given. In this feeling, the dialectic movement of the concept "man" is completed and perfected, the single man, instead of perishing in the struggle of all against all, first working his way upward out of his species and then taking up, in his own being, the whole of mankind through the medium of benevolence. By this evolution he raises himself to the level of the general. Far higher than that confused sympathy which, in lending temporary aid to one, brings lasting harm to many, is this adequate concept; true benevolence is founded upon the clearest reasoning, and is the activity of the mind's fullest power. The discord which self-consciousness has caused in man can be done away with only by the greatest possible clarification of self-consciousness: man returns mentally to the bosom of the universal, when every living thing causes him to exclaim in the words of the Indian philosopher: "Behold thyself."

Ethics ranks higher than morals, the latter merely comprising a collection of particular rules of conduct which, as particular, bear the stamp of the individual, the non-universal. The details of morality change according to epochs and peoples. This change has been regarded as an argument that there is no absolute but only relative good. But the concept of the Good is, like the concept of the Beautiful, the fruit of education; that is, it is the product of mind, which, through its own evolution, arrives at Knowledge. When we do away with all concessions to one-sided, extravagant desires, abstain from placing mind above the universal law of causality, and are content with the facts made known to us by science, we perceive that the absolute True, Beautiful, and Good, bears the character of the Universal. In this universal character it has always finally found expression in human life, and in this character it will always find expression. The idea which reaches perfect expression in the dialectic movement of these three concepts, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, has come into existence by the mediation of the self-individualizing self-consciousness, just as the evolution on the earth, which reaches its completion in man, is the outcome of the first chemical process. Not only have the two one law,--(mind is only in so far realized[65] as nature is expressed through it, and the actuality of nature is its expression in mind) but both are, in fact, one, the succession in their development on the earth being a succession only in relation to the earth, and for us in this respect. Although to our notion of time, thousands of millions of years lie between the two, their separation does not represent a second for the universe and its eternity, for the comprehension of which it must be disregarded.

The good man is he who does good for its own sake, without effort, not out of momentary caprice, but out of perfect knowledge and conviction. He is free, since he acts out of his own character, the law of nature appearing as the law of his own mind; freedom lies in the absence of discord and strife in the mind. The good man has strength of soul, just as the man who lifts a weight without effort, not he who lifts it only with the greatest effort, possesses strength of body.

There is no absolute Evil in contrast to the absolute Good. Evil is negative. The perfection of man is identical with the attainment of absolute Good through evolution.

Morality knows nothing of either reward or punishment; for it there are only causes and effects. This truth, on which morality is based, lends to the freedom out of which its activity proceeds a deeper worth. The eternal laws of mind point the way by which mankind has to proceed; it is the same way by which man has become man and by which he must proceed, even if he did not will to advance thus. In the struggle for existence, which knows only victory or destruction, progress is a necessity of nature, but it is less painful and more rapid the more clearly these laws come to be perceived by consciousness. Yet, however clear they may be, it is only by a tireless endeavor which shrinks from no sacrifice, that progress takes place. The end which morality has in view is distant, for it is high; but only with its attainment will mankind fully deserve its name when "struggle has been transformed to labor, when no insignia are recognized but those of right, no weapon used but intelligence, no banner raised but that of civilization."

In the volume, "Man the 'End' of Man" ("Der Mensch als Selbstzweck," 1877), "a positive criticism of Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious," Carneri defines instinct as no form of real thought, nothing dependent upon perception, but merely an inherited, mechanical dexterity dependent upon sensation. For the assumption that thought is the source of instinct must lead us naturally, on account of the existence of the latter where the centralizing organ of thought is absent, to the theory that thought is universal in nature; that is, we shall arrive at a theory of atom-souls. It is evident here that not Carneri's definition of instinct so much as his conception of thought is changed from the one adopted in "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus," thought being now limited, as it was not in the former book, to self-conscious mental activity, assumed to be dependent upon nervous centralization in the brain. In this book also, the author defines the idea as something having mental existence, though not, he says, in any metaphysical sense. His idealism is not of such sort that he recognizes any other way to the attainment of ideas than that of science; and to him "the service of the materialist who gives us information concerning the function of the smallest nerve-fibres is of more worth than that of the idealist who originates a whole philosophical system." The work of philosophy lies in the rejection of all that is contrary to science, and the clarification of ideals.

The will may be defined, not as a definite, separate power, but as the self-conscious impulse to action resulting from excitation. Any other definition is inconsistent with the theory of evolution, according to which that individuation which is the first condition of the struggle for existence, is nevertheless but the expression of all previously existing oppositions. To make of the will or of the impulse to self-preservation anything separate and individual, is as childish as to personify death. The individual is totality as unity. Darwinism teaches us, not that the world together with man has been created according to any teleological principle, but that it has developed by virtue of motion. The human being moves by virtue of reciprocal action and reaction with the world. Yet only by virtue of his unity as feeling does he think and will. Individuality is that which stamps all our activity with the mark of the ego, which causes us to recognize every impulse that moves in us as our impulse, to call all our willing ours. The psychical, the summation of functions to which we give this name, reaches consummation in the clarification of feeling to consciousness, in which the desire of an action or of abstinence from an action appears to us as our will. As thought is based on perception, so will is based on impulse; and since thought and will appear as the two highest opposites of feeling, and this, according to our definition, springs from sensation by way of perception, the will, including action and abstinence from action, arises out of the general sensitivity. The progress of science authorizes the expectation that the close relation of sensitivity to simple reaction will one day be discovered.

The conceptions of teleology are groundless. The so-called "ends" of nature have the peculiarity that they are according to the means. It does not rain in order that there may be vegetation, but vegetation exists because it is conditioned by the rain. Only with thinking man, in his struggle for existence, arises the concept of ends; man has not attained to civilization by help of a friend; rather has he wrung civilization from nature as an enemy; compelled by it to the exertion of his whole strength, and growing in cunning by exercise, he has learned to use the weaknesses of his foe to his own advantage. To want he owes the greatest things that he has accomplished. By way of labor alone can victory over nature be achieved and salvation won.

The standpoint of faith is childlike. Faith does not reason, and may not do so if it wishes to remain faith. The child can comprehend nature and man's relation to it only by the language of faith, and there are large classes of people who, for a long time, will be accessible to no other language but this. But faith must decrease in the same ratio as mankind outgrows intellectual childhood. In the same measure, the worth of the philosophical solution of certain problems must increase; and among the most important of these problems must be reckoned that of bridging the chasm between the individual and the world, which has grown wider with the awakening of consciousness. It lies in the nature of self-conscious thought to reach out beyond itself, just as it lies in the nature of sense-perception to regard this "beyond" as the world to come. Hence the endless longing which seeks the ruler of the world to come, and despairs without him; until the supposed right to a future life is perceived to be the right to the Only Whole, and an end is set in the attainment of this whole. For the thinking man an aimless life has no meaning; there is only one means of bridging the chasm; namely, that mankind shall set itself an end.

A final destruction of life upon the earth must surely come, whether it be in the shape of a sudden catastrophe or as the result of a slow process. But such an end can no more be regarded as the "end" in the philosophical sense than death can be regarded, in the same sense, as the "end" of the individual life. By the development of ideas, which are concepts of reason in distinction from concepts of the understanding, we arrive at a notion of the ideal as end.

In the ethical ideal, there is contained more than the empiricist can offer. The enthusiasm with which the true artist starves for his art, or the martyr perishes for his conviction, can never be fully explained from the empirical standpoint. One does not even need to be an idealist in order to act thus; but the materialist or the realist who possesses true love of beauty and a heart framed for great deeds, merely deceives himself when he refuses to acknowledge the All-embracing which therein overwhelms him. Sociology and the History of Civilization can only point out how man has attained to the ideas of the Beautiful and the Good; what these are and wherefore their influence is so powerful,--the real worth of the Beautiful and the Good,--thought by concepts alone can show.

The Idea of Man, as he has already developed and may yet develop, is, as far as our knowledge reaches, the highest of human thoughts. We are therefore formulating no metaphysical theory in personifying mankind, and pointing out that the perfecting of which it is capable is the great end which it has set itself. We know, by our knowledge of human nature, that mankind will always endeavor to be happy, and that it will approach nearer perfection the more real and general its happiness becomes.

The particular rules of morality may and must change; but the highest principle of all morality is changeless. From the purest moral feeling came Schiller's words: "Live with thy generation, but be not its creature; serve thy contemporaries, but in that which they need, not that which they prize. Without having shared their guilt, share with noble resignation their punishments, and yield thyself freely to the yoke which they both illy could do without and illy bear. By the steadfast courage with which thou refusest their pleasure, thou shalt prove to them that it is not cowardice which causes thy submission." In these three sentences there lies a whole system of ethics.

In the will to good, indivisible from a feeling of freedom, of which no power on earth can rob us, lies true happiness.

For mind, as for matter, the law of the indestructibility of force, of work, is true. That which appears as force or energy is motion; every impulse to motion is motion, and only in so far as it appears, can the quantity of motion, force, energy, increase or diminish; as a matter of fact, it always remains the same. But just as the activity and force of matter increase with its differentiation, so the activity and energy of the mind increase with intelligence. It is through intelligence that we come to a comprehension of the distinction between good and evil, and through intelligence that we are able to increase social prosperity, and so morality.

There are no innate, primary human rights; there are only acquired rights which man has gained for himself in the process of development.

If we were to express negatively the end which mankind sets itself, we should define it as the greatest possible reduction of pain. Conscious existence is accompanied by a feeling of pleasure; but the general progress heedlessly overrides the individual being, and we therefore have to erect barriers against the stream which thus turns pleasure into pain.

Pain and pleasure are relative to the individual. Every sensation is pleasurable as long as it does not exceed in strength a certain limit corresponding, in each case, to the nature of the individual. Since, however, every sensation becomes, by perception, feeling, thought appears as a modifying factor in all pain which does not arise from too extreme physical injury. The manner in which our perceptions, thought-images, are formed, the store of thought-images and concepts which we possess, and hence our thought-capacity, combined with the extent and clearness of our knowledge, are decisive not only with respect to the avoidance of pain and attainment of pleasure, but also with respect to our attitude towards pain and pleasure in general; every pain and every pleasure has, in the last analysis, such worth alone as we attribute to it. The universalization of true education, the increase of intelligence, is, therefore, the means by which man's lot may be bettered.

Through the conditions of the earth's atmosphere, man has grown to be the glorious creature that he is. If we gradually give him, by education, an advantageous love of life and pleasure therein, and at the same time do not neglect the cultivation of ethical principles, virtue will become, with the increase of happiness, a necessity.

If intelligence is to bear the fruit which we thus demand of it, its nature must be such as not only to be nourished by actual life, but also to uplift by its increase the whole man. And this is, in fact, the case; where it is not so, we have to do with a one-sided development such as existing circumstances often condition, but which cannot be regarded as normal. This point of view is the necessary consequence of the unity which we postulate of man. If thought and will have their origin in feeling, and if will clarifies itself through the clarification of thought, then all advance in thought leads, in general, to an advance in feeling, and true intelligence is inseparable from true love. We use the word "love" here, as designating intelligence in its highest sense, and declare, moreover, that we would desire to see this meaning alone attached to love. Over against the conception of love which we find in Hartmann and Schopenhauer, we place the conception of Spinoza, who designates it as a free, reasonable activity, and says of it as distinguished from passion that "the love of both man and wife has for its cause, not a pleasing exterior merely, but especially freedom of soul."

If we regard intelligence and love in their highest antithesis, the one appears as the appropriative, the other as the self-devoting conception of things. But since we form a conception of things and make them our own only in proportion to our intelligence, our attitude towards them must be according to this measure; and since there is no action without reaction, intelligence must be broadened by love as well as love clarified by intelligence. The highest of all is intelligence; but it is love that first lends it creative power; without love it cannot create, but only destroy. Everything great and noble that man can point out as his work is due to love--love of mankind, love of country, love of knowledge, love of art, love of labor in general. If the devotion is deficient in purity, determined by extraneous motives, the work will bear marks of the deficiency. The reason why the power of love is so much greater than every other power is that its all-embracing, boundless character reacts upon it as a feeling of eternity, enabling it to undertake all things, as if it might conquer even death. Life, considered in its parts, is cheerless; but love, regarding it in its totality, points out to it the way of salvation through itself. Love is the concrete element which exalts the abstraction of Intelligence to incarnate Idea; therefore is love the idealizing principle from which intelligence draws belief in its own aims. And if one questions whence comes the conception of immortality, impossible to be won from experience, love must confess itself guilty of originating it, being unable, to exist without this self-delusion.

Carneri thus places himself in direct opposition to Schopenhauer's and Hartmann's notion of love, which, he says, "falls like a deep shadow over their whole conception of the world"; and he pleads in favor of a standpoint which shall make self-perfection the aim of existence for woman as for man. He propounds a theory of education for woman which, according to his own statement, places him at one in spirit with Mill; but he avers that he cannot follow the latter in his more extreme views, which, he says, were evidently assumed by Mill only in view of the strength of the enemy with which he had to contend. The book ends with the following paragraph:--

"We do not run after ideals; hence no plan floats before us, according to which the world should be shaped anew. He who understands how to read the book of History knows that, in no one place does the identity of form and content come more clearly into view than in others, and that, with every new content, there is always a new form also. The modern state has by no means outlived itself yet, and those who endeavor to do away with it know not what they are about. Instead of thinking upon a new form, let us devote our care to the clarification of the content. No one deceives himself as to the suffering in the world; but he deceives himself who thinks that he alone can bring about a better condition. Only the action of all can better things. Therefore, that which remains for us to do can be summed up in these few words: _Let us make every effort possible to place every one in a position to help himself._ This is the only ethical conception of universal reform. Let us prize knowledge above all things, and let us show that we so prize it by increasing it and diffusing it as much as lies in our power; let us prize it above all things, and prove that we do so by using it for the good of mankind. By knowledge we have become human beings, because knowledge has brought us to a comprehension of the Beautiful and the Good. It is knowledge that sets life an end in the attainment of the Good, and knowledge that glorifies our path to that end. Let us educate for ourselves wives that shall not merely dimly feel what we think, but such as will bring to the execution of our will a clear understanding. Let us educate for ourselves wives who, fired by the same feelings as our own, will unite their efforts with ours in the education of a generation that shall take _morally_ the stand upon which the science of the century finds itself. Let us seek true happiness if we would find virtue. It is to no wisdom, but it is likewise to no foolishness that we owe the existence of the world. Man can be foolish; but he can also be wise; and if he is wise, then the world too is wisely arranged."

Carneri begins his "First Principles of Ethics" ("Grundlegung der Ethik," 1881) with an investigation of the origin of primary concepts and our knowledge through these. In order to bring light into our conception, we must first of all learn the way to the concept; for then only can we see how the concept completes itself in the judgment, and becomes, in reasoning, the criterion of its own worth.

The problem which first presents itself to us is that of Life in general. The problem is inseparable from that of corporeality. If we follow phenomena to their last conceivable reduction, we finally pass from the perception of mass to the concept of matter; but further than this we cannot go. At least, we can perceive only material things, and that which we call the spiritual in distinction from the corporeal has always something corporeal as its basis; and if we do not wish to dispense with the reliable guidance of experience, we shall not overleap this barrier. Science cannot reckon with supernatural factors.

What matter _is_ we cannot know; that it exists, however, that the phenomena of nature are no empty seeming, sensation, as the felt result of the mutual relation between us and the outer world, testifies. Sensation is the basis of our self-consciousness, of the only full and irrefutable certainty that we possess. As to what true Being or Existence is, there is disagreement; but there can be none regarding the fact that we are conscious of our sensations; and upon this consciousness rests the postulate of the materiality[66] of all existence. In order to assert the materiality of all phenomena, we are forced to distinguish between a corporeal and a non-corporeal action of matter; matter operates mentally when its division or differentiation proceeds so far that the resulting phenomena can no longer be perceived by the senses, but only conceived by thought. The indivisibility of mind from corporeality follows directly from this definition of the mental side of nature. We distinguish between the two only for convenience' sake. The newer Psychology knows nothing of Sensuality in the old sense of the word, since the basis of all psychical effects is physical.

For matter operating mentally, as for matter operating corporeally, there are no specific energies; it is, as Wundt expresses it, functionally indifferent. The differing results of a high differentiation of centralized organisms arise in accordance with the changing combinations of elementary parts and nerve activities. These results are not, however, to be regarded as the mere effects of matter, but as phenomena of the same, in fact, as the consummation and crown of the whole evolution of nature. Even in the sense-organs we see the differentiation of matter advance beyond the sphere of sense-perception. Therefore, in distinguishing between mind and matter, we are still in the realm of the natural, and follow the path of experience, if by experience is understood not alone immediate experience, but also the conclusions which directly or by strict analogy may be drawn from it.

The theory of an atom-soul and the theory of an organizing principle must be abandoned as teleological, and so inconsistent with the facts of evolution. The theory which holds force to be a transcendental existence, a something outside of matter, must also be rejected. With the endless divisibility is given an endless motion, inward or outward; the endlessly divisible matter exists in endless motion, or what is the same, the endless motion is the endlessly divided matter. Hence motion, like matter, can never diminish; only the form of its appearance changes.

The order in nature cannot be used as the basis of a teleological argument; what we call order of nature is necessity as distinguished from chance. For example, the statement that the life of the earth requires the alternation of day and night means merely that, since day and night alternate upon the earth, only such beings could arise and continue in existence thereon as flourish under this alternation.

The first appearance of protoplasm introduces no strictly new thing, but only a new form of matter with life-motion; and the formation of germs is only a further step of the process. The most important characteristic of all life is sensation. This is the form in which, in all living things, that which in the rest of nature we call reaction, appears. That it is so easy for us to say in the same breath, the animal possesses sensation; and, by this particular excitation we produce in him this particular sensation, has its reason in the fact that the animal is not only capable of sensation, but is, moreover, continually in a state of sensation. By the fact of its continual reaction upon sensation, it keeps itself alive. Hence the two concepts coincide, so to speak; sensation is to life what divisibility is to matter. We express with these words more than a similitude, since all sensation is based upon motion, is, indeed, motion, and every motion may be reduced to a division or differentiation in the broadest sense of the word. All further distinctions, as, for instance, with respect to the mode of sensation (which belongs, without doubt, to plants as well as to animals), we leave unnoticed; all differences in the forms of life are but those of degree, though they may be wide differences of degree; they are to be ascribed to the influence of outer circumstances.

Sensation develops in the direction of least resistance. In the animal world, we have to distinguish between outer and inner factors, with the latter of which a new element seems to be introduced. The difference between the two is not, however, one of essence, since the will, too, is determined by outward circumstance. The inner factors of evolution are comprised in the germ, from which the individual is produced; while the environment constitutes the outer factors. The individual enters the world with a certain reserve quantity of force, which represents his power of resistance to outside forces, and he passes the more rapidly from youth to age the more rapidly this force is consumed. This accumulation of force is, therefore, identical with the impulse to self-preservation, which, as modified by various inner and outer excitations, manifests itself in various forms. But he who, as unimpassioned thinker, desires progress, desires also retrogression; he who desires youth desires age, since the two concepts are correlative and the one includes the other; old age, and finally death, must come to our planet as a whole, as well as to the human individual. The original tendencies of the total character determine, for the most part, the manner in which the individual sustains the struggle for existence; yet the environment is in no less degree active in this determination. Not less important than the manner of reaction is the differing susceptibility to particular kinds of excitation; the character resulting from the mutual action and reaction of individual and world depends upon the manner in which the individual adapts himself to circumstances, ennobles and disciplines himself.

In idealism, as long as it remains within proper bounds, there is certainly truth; he who derides it, derides himself. But realism has also its truth, as long as it does not misjudge the worth of concepts, by which alone we clearly recognize what things are to us, what their relations to us are, and so how we have to deal with them. Concrete concepts inform us as to what is true and what is not true in phenomena. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that what things are in themselves, not what they are for us, is of importance to us; as if we could have an interest in that which things are not for us. The decisive point is the fact that, not things as they appear to us, but their rightly conceived appearance, their appearance as understood by adequate concepts, is the beginning and end of knowledge. Hence the true student of nature can no more do without the concept than the true philosopher can leave material perception out of account. Stiff-necked Materialism is as one-sided as old-time Metaphysics; the one has no meaning for its form, the other no form for its content; the one is a corpse, the other a ghost, and each strives in vain to attain the warmth of life. Natural Science and Philosophy must tread different paths, in so far as division of labor requires them to do so; but they labor at the two sides of one whole. Nature is not a machine, but life in its fullest form, and the task set us is to understand her as she is, not to patch together a nature out of disconnected scraps.

Carneri adopts the definition given by Claude Bernard, to whom life is neither a principle nor a result, but a conflict. To the chemical synthesis, from which protoplasm results, is added, through mechanical integration, morphological synthesis, to whose special form inherited characteristics are related as elements. Through the conflict within living forms, and between these and the rest of the world, motion, attaining to the character of function, appears as continuous consumption. Destruction and renewal are inseparable correlative concepts. This fact is contained in the concept of the conservation of force, work, and motion. We may distinguish between (1) latent life, such as that accumulated in the germ, (2) the merely oscillating plant-life, and (3) free animal life. With this distinction, we place ourselves upon the standpoint of the individual, for whom there is both beginning and end, and to whom renewal is subordinated to destruction; for consumption, death is the characteristic of living in distinction from non-living matter. If, therefore, we regard life as identical with death, we merely assert that we consider death identical with life, and that, in the broader sense of the word, for the universe as a whole, there is no death. That which Claude Bernard designates as Construction is the differentiation and division of labor arising in the process of integration. The cell constitutes the first integration of protoplasm. In it, motion takes place in a particular form, organizes according to this form, causes division and synthesis, and impresses features of character that, by their action and reaction with the environment, either effect their own destruction, or else maintain their existence, propagate themselves, become fixed, and undergo further evolution. In this manner species arise and vary: and the more primitive the form, the more variable it is; the more advanced, the more fixed. Hence the invariable character of the germ-cells. In bone-formation, it is clearly shown that special structure begins very early,--in the cell, namely; but it is preserved only where it is aided by the necessary action and reaction. Autonomic in itself, life submits itself to the general laws of evolution.[67] As the direction of motion is determined for whole groups of cells by the direction of the motion of the protoplasm in the single cells, so organic function is determined by the grouping of the irritable, contractile, sensible cells. From the first origin of life up to its most perfect development, everything is formed at the cost of other forms. If life is, therefore, to be conceived as a conflict, it is a conflict as wide as the universe itself, and we say, with Claude Bernard, that "life may be characterized, but not defined."

Everything that has sensation lives. As life depends upon particular combinations of particular elements, so sensation is the characteristic mark of such combinations, and a higher form of that simple reaction common to nature in general. Reaction has its reason in the motion arising from the endless divisibility of matter, through which the most different combinations and reactions are produced. Since we have before us, in our contemplation of corporeal nature, not abstract matter in general, but some sixty or more special chemical elements, we must, in thinking of atoms, have in mind atoms of these particular elements, and not atoms of abstract matter in general; of such atoms of matter in general, or, if one will, of primordial matter, we can know only that they would in general attract and repel. Only by degrees can a particular reaction of the elements have been developed; and since our known elements have particular different reactions, they must be the product of different combinations. Sensation is due to certain combinations of these elements; when the combinations no longer exist, the atoms of these elements still react according to their characteristic method as atoms of particular elements, but the sensation dependent on their peculiar combinations is destroyed. The atom as such is devoid of sensation, and we may convert our earlier proposition, making it read: Only that which lives is sensible. We know quite well how much of this course of reasoning is of hypothetic nature; but the strictest consistency cannot be denied it. The method which explains life by the assumption of sensible atoms is a much shorter and easier one; but is it not likewise a method of greater risk? And is there no danger that, in rejecting a method by which all changes in phenomena are referred to functions of combinations of elements, we may seek, in matter itself, something that is not matter? The above theory of life, also, takes its departure from the assumption that all was, originally, in the formation of the world, living in the broader sense of the word. But here we are concerned with life in the narrower sense of the word, as distinguished from what we call dead nature.

Soul is, therefore, according to our definition, equivalent to animal life, in contrast to the life of the plant. The significance of the distinction lies in the intermediation of the general organic unity, not in a qualitative division. The elements are the same; only their connection is different, and that which distinguishes the animal is a centralization of the organs. In referring to the possession of soul by the animal, we simply point out the independent manner in which, by reason of sensation, its impulses govern, and develop, through the scale, up to consciousness and will. Of course the gradations are very numerous, inasmuch as the functions of the soul are determined by the development of the organism. The difference between animals whose sensation attains clear consciousness and such as do not attain to more than a mechanical action, does not concern us, as long as we regard the psychical phenomena in their most general form. Every animal possesses soul; we avoid the expression "_a_ soul," as giving the soul the significance of something by itself. In like manner, we do not say that _a_ life, but that life belongs to the animal. The chief condition necessary to soul as to life consists in union to a whole, and soul represents the gradation by which life lifts itself to the plane where it becomes a mirror of the world.

Sensation, as centralized in the brain, becomes perception, the sensation of a part becoming the sensation of the whole, a _feeling_ of the individual. It is perceptions which cause movement. To find a connection between perception as generally understood and the action of the muscle would be as difficult as to show the connection between body and soul in the sense of Spirit. But if we regard perception as feeling, then the awakening of a corresponding impulse, and the transformation of this into will, which finds expression in a corresponding motion, is something so natural that it needs but a glance at the nerve-apparatus in order to comprehend the rapidity of the whole process. With regard to the unconscious character of the greater part of the process, and its corresponding rapidity, we have to consider the gradual nature of the development of the nervous system, the gradual drill of the parts, until the whole process becomes perfect. By feeling is here not meant necessarily feeling as pain or pleasure. This quality of feeling does not necessarily belong to every perception, else thought, as a train of perceptions, would be unbearable; a certain strength of feeling is necessary in order that it may attain the character of pain or pleasure; as we recognize a boundary at which sensation begins, so we recognize one at which feeling begins to attain the character of pleasure and from which, up to a second boundary-line, it continues to appear as pleasure; beyond this line it appears as pain. Moderate feeling is beneficial to the organism, immoderate feeling harmful; hence the appearance of the one as pleasure, and of the other as pain. We say expressly "moderate," not "weak" feeling, because too weak feeling may also, under certain conditions, be painful. Horwicz rightly protests against any attempt to arrange the feelings in an exact scale, since a particular feeling may lead to quite different phenomena of emotion, according to the particular circumstances and the particular development which it undergoes in the organism, and since it is furthermore nothing changeless and distinct, but merely an energy that necessarily leads to activity. Hence it is that the excitation which does not pass the stage of sensation remains localized, but when it attains to the stage of feeling takes possession of the whole individual, and brings the essential tendency of his being[68] to expression.

As Carneri tends to interpret the sensation which he predicates of the lower animals as a mere higher reaction of living matter, and thus wholly mechanical, so he tends to regard the activity of all animals which lack brain (under which he understands especially the nervous developments found in the gray matter which contains Haeckel's "soul-cells") as devoid of pleasure and pain, and due to mere inheritance and force of habit. So the action of the ants is not to be attributed to intelligence, but to mere reaction upon sensation due to inheritance and exercise; and so the movements of a butterfly impaled upon a red-hot needle would be attributable to the hindrance of its flight, not to pain.[69] Thus, with Carneri, the words "sensation," "soul," "perception," and "feeling," lose their ordinary significance; and this fact must be held in mind in the interpretation of his assertions that "all animals have soul," and "all animals have sensation."

Carneri further cites Haeckel's definition of the organism as a cell-monarchy, in which different individuals, and different groups of individuals, having different duties, are guided by a central power. He does not intend thus to assume special centres for consciousness and will, but only to assert that, through such centralization, the expression of the whole individual, as total consciousness and total will, takes place.

Not only the brain, but other parts of the nervous system, are affected in perception; and the same parts are operative in remembrance. Thus the association of ideas is explained.

As long as the animal remains upon the plane of mere instinct, it has only blind impulses.[70] Only in the most highly organized animals do we find the first traces of conscious, though not yet of self-conscious, will. In that the animal knows what it will, it distinguishes clearly the objects of its will, and hence its own impulses. Upon the earlier plane of mere self-preservation, the beneficial, harmful, and indifferent were not yet made inward, but only distinguished outwardly by nature in the struggle for existence, in which the fittest survived; in consciousness, however, the harmful and advantageous become inward, taking the form of pain and pleasure. But the animal never gets beyond the concrete case,--in which his inherited instincts, working with a rapidity and freedom we often see imitated in the passions of men, sometimes act so advantageously as almost to deceive us into believing them the result of reflection; yet sometimes, again, bring most disastrous results. The animal never attains to a notion of the Whole. Associations and general perceptions the higher animal species have, but not concepts.

Impulses appear, in their primary form in the animals, as passions.[71] The first beginning of the ethical may be found in the passion of love in the broadest sense of the word, as sexual love and the love of offspring. The first is chiefly exacting, the second is higher, in that it gives.

That which divides man physically from the brutes is merely the union of qualities, all of which, but never all of which united, we find among the animals; that which divides him mentally from them is self-conscious thought, developed by means of speech. Through the development of attention, which arises in connection with a greater and greater centralization, sensation becomes perception, this develops further to general perceptions, and is still further perfected to concepts.

Carneri believes primitive man to have been, not more benevolent than the animals, but less so. Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals, the brutes seem to satisfy their own wants without interfering with the satisfaction of others, and, except where the possession of females is concerned, to live in peace with each other. On the other hand, the influence of man upon the domestic animals may be seen in the greed of the dog, who, as capable of instruction, takes on himself all the evil qualities of his master. The cat, who is not so intelligent as the dog, is not thus influenced.

For nature there is no good and evil. The animal which tears and devours its prey is no worse than the swollen stream, that uproots the trees in its course. With consciousness, intention awakes; yet in the brute this is only secondary; the brute distinguishes between pain and pleasure, but not between these as the result of its own action in distinction from that of nature outside itself. Only the self-consciousness of the human being knows good and evil; nature does not know evil, for she does not know the opposition on which it is based. There is wisdom in the story of Genesis, which sees in the beginning of knowledge, the commencement of evil. The awakening of self-feeling is the beginning of a chasm, through the full development of which the individual is at length separated from nature. With self-consciousness and the feeling of boundless isolation that therein comes over him, man begins his ethical development.

But the ethical does not begin with the human being known to us by natural history; even yet there are races of man which stand lower than many species of animals; and the early development of moral activity was of necessity much more of the nature of that which we call evil than of that which we call good. The mind is a sort of light; and as warmth is indivisible from the motion which we call light, and the first warmth of the sun could only burn, so the motion which we call mind could at first only have destroyed; self-consciousness, in its earliest stages, can have produced only the intense feelings which lie nearer pain than pleasure. As man came to have intention, and gained new wants in development, he could regard the intentions of his fellow-men only with distrust. Envy, hatred, dislike, were developed long before the family, and, later, the tribe furnished opportunity for love. Self-consciousness could, at first, interpret good and evil only as having reference to self, just as it also conceived its freedom as that of its own caprice. The desire for happiness and endeavor to attain it is the primary incentive to all human undertakings. It is erroneous to suppose that man is nearer to the brutes by this impulse; the animal does not possess it, has only the impulse to self-preservation.

The idea that man and wife together first constitute the complete human being, and that the real future of this human being lies in the children--the idea of the family is, certainly, of all ideas, primordial, though it probably came late to consciousness. From the family developed the tribe with the eldest at its head. The more peaceful the tribe, the more others combined against it, and by their combination compelled it still further to strengthen its resources. The feeling of power awakened by the growing concord extended further and further, and finally made its way to the individual with the full force of the Idea. This development, but more especially the compelling power of the struggle for existence, soon called the bravest to command in place of the eldest of the tribe.