we think of it as a summation, an
adding on of new parts and constituents, and thus try to form a concrete
image of the process, we spoil it altogether. If we speak of the
transition from the potential to the actual, from the tendency to the
realisation, we may not indeed spoil it, but we have done little to make
the process more intelligible. So much only we can say: certain as it is
that the Psyche, especially as conscious inner life, only gradually
develops and becomes actual, and that in the closest dependence upon the
development, maturing, and establishment of the nervous basis and the
bodily organisation in general, yet the naturalistic view, _a fortiori_
the materialistic, is never at any point correct. There are three things
to be borne in mind. First, the origin, the "whence" of the psychical is
wholly hidden from us, and, notwithstanding the theory of evolution and
descent, it remains an insoluble riddle. And secondly, however closely it
is associated with and tied down to the processes of bodily development,
it is never at any stage of its development really a function of it in
actual and exact correspondence and dependence. And finally, the further
it advances in its self-realisation, the further the relation of
dependence recedes into the background, and the more do the independence
and autonomy of the psychical processes become prominent.

We have still to consider and amplify this in several respects, and then
we may go on to still more important matters.

Underivability.

The first of the three points we have called attention to has, so to
speak, become famous through the lectures of du Bois-Reymond, which
attracted much attention, on "The Limits of Natural Knowledge," and "The
Seven Riddles of the Universe." That these thoughtful lectures made so
great an impression did not mean that a great new discovery had been made,
but was rather a sign of the general lack of reflection on the part of the
public, for they only expressed what had always been self-evident, and
what had only been forgotten through thoughtlessness, or concealed by
polemical rhetoric. Consciousness, thought, even the commonest sensation
of pleasure and pain, or the simplest sense-perception, cannot be compared
with "matter and energy," with the movements of masses. They represent a
foreign and altogether inexplicable guest in this world of matter,
molecules, and elements. Even if we could follow the play of the nervous
proces