in his latest work Haeckel regards
sensation (or unconscious sentience) as an ultimate and irreducible
attribute of substance, like matter (or extension) and force (or
spirit)" (p. 752).

I call this unphilosophical because--omitting any reference here to the
singular parenthetical explanations or paraphrases, for which I suppose
Haeckel is not to be held responsible--this is simply abandoning all
attempt at explanation; it even closes the door to inquiry, and is
equivalent to an attitude proper to any man in the street, for it
virtually says: "Here the thing is anyhow, I cannot explain it."
However legitimate and necessary such an attitude may be as an
expression of our ignorance, we ought not to use the phrase "ultimate
and irreducible," as if no one could ever explain it.

Moreover, if it be true that--

"Haeckel does not teach--never did teach--that the spiritual
universe is an aspect of the material universe, as his critic makes
him say, it is his fundamental and most distinctive idea that both
are attributes or aspects of a deeper reality" (p. 745)--

in that case there is, indeed, but little difference between us. But
no reader of Haeckel's _Riddle_ would have anticipated that such a
contention could be made by any devout disciple; and I wonder whether
Mr M'Cabe can adduce any passage adequate to support so estimable a
position. Surely it is difficult to sustain in face of quotations such
as these:--

"The peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is ... a physiological
problem, and as such must be reduced to the phenomena of physics
and chemistry" (p. 65).

"I therefore consider Psychology a branch of natural science--a
section of physiology.... We shall give to the material basis of
all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the
provisional name of psychoplasm" (p. 32).

_Life and Energy._

The one and only point on which I think it worth while to express
decided dissidence is to be found in the paragraph where Mr M'Cabe
makes a statement concerning what he calls "vital force,"--a term I do
not remember to have ever used in my life. He claims for Haeckel what
is represented by the following extracts from his article (pp. 745, 6,
7):--

"He does not say that life is 'knocked out of existence' when the
material organism decays. He says that the vital energy no longer
exists _as such_, but is resolved into the inorganic ene