specifically
new came into existence which had its antecedent condition in a previous
state of existence, but has not yet found its sufficient explanation in
this antecedent state.

Sec. 2. _The Origin of Sensation and of Consciousness._

The limits of our knowledge show themselves still more clearly in the
attempts to explain the origin of consciousness and its lowest
form--sensation. Self-consciousness is without doubt ideally nearer to
consciousness in this, that both are an immaterial activity; and yet we
found no demonstrable bridge which leads from consciousness to
self-consciousness. Still broader is the gulf between the material and the
immaterial, between the unconscious and the conscious,--or, to describe the
two realms with names which bring them nearest together, between that which
is without sensation and that which has sensation: a gulf to bridge which
philosophy also has vainly exerted its utmost efforts, as has been well
known since the "supernatural assistance" of Descartes and the
"preestablished harmony" of Leibnitz. Wherein lies the real necessity that
there should be sensation? How does the material become something that is
felt? What is the demonstrable cause (not the condition, but the cause) of
a sentient subject? To these questions, every science up to the present day
lacks an answer. As is well known, DuBois-Reymond, in his
previously-mentioned lecture upon "The Limits of our Knowledge of Nature,"
declares the origin of sensation and of consciousness to be one of two
limits, beyond {128} which we have not only to say "_ignoramus_," but
"_ignorabimus_."

_In abstracto_, we might think of two attempts at bridging over this gulf:
the first one is that we try to transform sensation itself into something
material, and the other is that we attribute sensation also to that which,
according to our observation, seems to be without sensation; namely, to
matter and its elements, the atoms. Both of these attempts have been
made--the former by D. F. Strauss in his "The Old Faith and the New," and
by the English philosopher, Herbert Spencer, in his "First Principles of
Philosophy;" the latter, first pointed out by Schopenhauer, was taken up
and farther developed by Zoellner in his work, "Ueber die Natur der Kometen"
("Nature of the Comets"), Leipzig, Engelmann, 1872, and with special
acuteness by an "Anonymus" in the work: "Das Unbewusste von Standpunkt der
Physiologie und Descendenztheorie" ("The Unconsc