lexities composed of them, even to stone, then all reasonable
conception of natural things and processes certainly vanishes into thin
air.

It will be remembered, however, that in treating the question of the origin
of self-consciousness, although we were not able to solve the problem,
nevertheless we had to ascribe high value to the investigation of all
psychical processes on the low stage of sensation and consciousness, since
they show us not the cause, but the condition and basis, of
self-consciousness. Likewise, in the question as to the origin of sensation
and of consciousness, although we are not able to solve it, we will
willingly admit that we observe, even in that which has no sensation,
qualities and processes which furnish the absolutely necessary condition
and basis for sensation. For the same reason, we will also admit the
manifold analogies of sensation which we observe in that which is without
sensation. The whole system of symbols in nature which fills our treasury
of words and penetrates, in a {132} thousandfold way, our scientific and
popular, our poetical and prosaic speech, our thoughts and feelings, bears
witness to the fact that that which is without sensation is also a
preparatory step to sensation, and feeling both active and passive springs
from it. However, a preparatory step, as such, is not necessarily the
cause; and the fact and the acknowledgment of a correlation is not on that
account an explanation.

Sec. 3. _The Origin of Life._

The third problem to be solved is the origin of life. As is well known,
Darwin himself makes no attempt at explaining this problem, but is
satisfied with the idea that life was infused into one or a few forms by
the Creator ("Origin of Species," 6 ed., p. 429). His investigations and
theories only begin where organic life, in its first and lowest forms, is
already in existence.

But lately there have been made, in the realm of the organic, discoveries
of beings which take the lowest conceivable round on the ladder of
organisms, and which in their form and structure are so simple that from
them to the inorganic there seems to be but a short step. We can no longer
mention as belonging to the bridges which are said to lead from the organic
world to the inorganic, the often-named _bathybius_, discovered by Huxley,
and so strongly relied upon for the mechanical explanation of life--a slimy
net-like growth, which covers the rocks in the great depths of the ocean.