animals and
armadillos, on the one hand, and dogs, apes, men, on the other." The fact
that in the human individual consciousness and self-consciousness are
gradually developed, is to him a proof that in the organic kingdom also
consciousness and self-consciousness came into existence gradually, and,
indeed, hand-in-hand with the development of the nervous system; and with
this result he thinks that he has relieved himself from the task of showing
the "how" of the origin of self-consciousness. This becomes clearly evident
from a remark about the origin of consciousness, in his "Anthropogeny,"
where he says that, if DuBois-Reymond had thought that consciousness is
developed, he would no longer have held its origin to be a thing beyond the
limits of human capacity. Haeckel likewise seems to regard the question of
the origin of moral self-determination as solved or rejected, if only
freedom is denied--which, indeed, is repeatedly done by him.

A similar defect in the treatment of this question by evolutionists we find
in the works of Oscar Schmidt, Gustav Jaeger, and others. Even Emil
DuBois-Reymond, who, in his celebrated and eloquent lecture on "The Limits
of the Knowledge of Nature," given before the assembly of scientists at
Leipzig, 1872, asserts so energetically that the origin of sensation and
consciousness is inexplicable (see next section), seems to {125} take the
origin of self-consciousness for granted, and as needing no further
explanation, if only consciousness is once present.

Since, then, the scientists leave us without a sufficient answer to the
question respecting the origin of self-consciousness and of moral
self-determination, we shall have to turn to the philosophers. Here,
indeed, we find rich definitions and genetic analyses, but none that lead
us any farther than to the information that consciousness is the necessary
condition of self-consciousness; that animal instinct is the necessary
antecedent condition of moral self-determination. Yet in the works of these
very philosophers who are inclined to a mechanical and "monistic" view of
the world, we find that they directly avoid the question as to the origin
of self-consciousness and of moral self-determination. As soon as they are
led near it, in the course of reasoning in their works, they suddenly turn
aside again to the quite different questions of the connection between
brain and soul, between physical and psychical, external and internal
process