es, etc. Evidently they feel that with this question they have
arrived at the weak point of their system. That here is a weak point, we
clearly see in the case of D. F. Strauss, a leading advocate of modern
naturalism, and the greatest philosophic scholar of that school. It is
true, in his "Postscript as Preface," as we saw before, he mentions the
origin of self-consciousness as one of the points which need special
explanation; but he seems to have made this acknowledgment more with the
purpose of showing that DuBois-Reymond, in admitting the origin of
self-consciousness to be explainable, has no longer any reason to contest
the explicability of the {126} origin of sensation and consciousness; for
in his work on "The Old Faith and the New," he did not enter into that
question at all. On the other hand, he makes in his last-mentioned work a
remarkable confession. In answering the question--how do we determine our
rule of life?--he comes to speak of the position of man in nature, traces a
law of progress in nature, and says: "In this cumulative progression of
life, man is also comprised, and, moreover, in such wise that the organic
plasticity of our planet (provisionally, say some naturalists, but that we
may fairly leave an open question) culminates in him. _As nature can not go
higher, she would go inwards._ 'To be reflected within itself,' was a very
good expression of Hegel's. Nature felt herself already in the animal, but
she wished to know herself also." But still stronger is the following
expression: "_In man, nature endeavored not merely to exalt, but to
transcend herself._" In Sec. 1, Chap. II, we shall have to speak of this
important acknowledgment of teleology in nature, which such an antagonist
of teleology as Strauss makes in the above-quoted remarks about a progress
in nature and a will of nature; but here we are more interested in the
equally remarkable acknowledgment of the fact that man can not be explained
from nature alone--that he is something which transcends nature. For that
(according to Strauss) nature, in originating man, not only _intended_ to
transcend herself, but really did transcend herself and, that she succeeded
in her intention, we can infer from the moral precept which Strauss gives:
"Do not forget for a moment, that thou art human; not merely a natural
production."

The result of our investigation, therefore, is that {127} with
self-consciousness and free moral self-determination something