in the German _Natur-philosophie_, the
true beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as Bruno
and De Cusa. What is to be observed is this, yet few understand it, nor
has even Symonds cleared the last barrier--that when a Pantheist has got
so far as to conceive an identity between matter and spirit, while on the
other hand a scientific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and
matter, there is nothing to choose between them. Only this is true, that
the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on Pantheistic
poetic bases, as in Schelling's case, or purely logical, as in Hegel's,
and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, merely material, simply scientific
grounds after the example of Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that
people no longer recognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought
it was a brand new workshop or laboratory. But I can remember very
distinctly that to me Evolution did _not_ come as if I had received a new
soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a bath, and put on new
garments. And as I became an English Evolutionist in due time, I had
this great advantage, that by beginning so young I succeeded in doing
very thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly
understand is _most_ difficult--that is, not merely to accept the truth,
but to get rid of the old _associations_ of the puzzle of a difference
between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle
about "God," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there
is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure
Evolution, which does not meddle with "the Unknowable."

There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neumann, who was about
as many-sided a man as could be found even in a German university. He
was a great Chinese scholar--had been in China, and also read on
mathematics and modern history. I attended these lectures (not the
mathematics) and liked them: so we became acquainted. I found that he
had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded in the
Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang--probably Mexico--in
the fifth century. I proposed to translate it, and did so, he making
emendations and adding fresh matter to the English version.

Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon found that I was of
the same kind. One day he lent me a large work on some Indian subject,
and the next I brought it back.