dle
concentrated on a single point. In the third place, the riddle meets us
anew and undiminished in every developing individual. For to say that the
physical inwardness, once it has arisen, is "transmitted," is not an
explanation but merely an admission that the riddle exists. And the idea
that the psychical is just a penumbra or shadow of reality, which comes of
itself and so to speak gratis, is quite inadmissible from the point of
view of strict natural science. There are no longer _luxus_ and _lusus
naturae_. Reality cannot throw a "shadow." According to the principles of
the conservation of matter and energy, we must be able to show whence it
gets the so-called shadow, and with what it compensates for it.

Pre-eminence of Consciousness.

But we have already spent too much time over this naive mode of looking at
things, which, though it professes to place things in their true light, in
reality distorts them and turns them upside down. As if this world of the
external and material, all these bodies and forces, were our first and
most direct data, and were not really all derived from, and only
discoverable by, consciousness. We have here to do with the ancient view
of all philosophy and all reflection in general, although in modern days
it has taken its place as a great new discovery even among naturalists
themselves, by whom it is extolled and recognised as "the conquest of
materialism." Such exaggerated emphasis tends to conceal the fact that
this truth has been regarded as self-evident from very early times.

What is a body, extension, movement, colour, smell and taste? What do I
possess of them, or know of them, except through the images, sensations
and feelings which they call up in my receptive mind? No single thing
wanders into me as itself, or reveals itself to me directly; only through
the way in which they affect me, the peculiar changes which they work in
me, do things reveal to me their existence and their special character. I
have no knowledge of an apple-tree or of an apple, except through the
sense perceptions they call up in me. But these sense perceptions, what
are they but different peculiar states of my consciousness, peculiar
determinations of my mind? I see that the tree stands there, but what is
it to see? What is the perception of a colour, of light, of shade, and
their changes? Surely only a peculiar change of my mind itself, a
particular state of stimulus and awareness brought about i