f
this theory may be for the operations of physics and chemistry, its
theoretical value consists essentially in the fact that it formulates more
accurately the perception of the limits of our exact knowledge. Even the
idea of Lotze, that the atoms (in themselves different) are not really the
final elements of matter, but consist of still more simple but likewise
different elements, seems to us more a decoration than an extension of the
limits at which our perception has arrived; we stand before a double door,
but find both doors locked. We agree with DuBois-Reymond, when he declares,
in his before-mentioned lecture, the impossibility of perceiving the last
elements of the {146} world, matter and force, to be the other limit of our
knowledge of nature which, together with the impossibility of the
explanation of the origin of sensation and consciousness, remains forever
fixed.

Likewise, the peculiar modification which G. Th. Fechner gives to the
theory of the last elements of the world, cannot escape the charge of
leaving the problem of the world scientifically just as unsolved as before.
Fechner not only finds, as we have already mentioned, the difference
between the organic and the inorganic in the difference of the mutual
motions, but he also finds that the character of organic motions is exactly
the same as that which the bodies of the universe have among themselves in
their motions. Thus he distinguishes the _cosmorganic_ motion, which is
performed in the whole of the universe, and the _molecular-organic_ motion,
which we observe in the single organisms of the earth; he makes God the
personal, self-conscious soul of this cosmical organism; and, in using the
law of the tendency to stability, with which he completes the Darwinian
selection theory, asserts that the organic in the whole of the universe, as
well as in the narrow sphere of single bodies on the earth, is the first
thing from which the inorganic was separated and became gradually fixed.
Thus, in his opinion, the problem which up to the present has occupied
investigators,--namely, how did the organic originate from the
inorganic?--would have to be reversed to, how did the inorganic originate
from the organic?

Preyer would also reach a similar result with his above-mentioned theory of
the identity of life and motion. For according to this theory, the living
would {147} be as old and common as motion, and the organic but the dregs
of life.

We may, therefo