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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Soul Substance.|14-104}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Soul Substance.|14-104}} | ||
. | {{Style P-No indent|that of others (men and animals), we ''infer'' from individual movements, conformable to purpose.}} | ||
{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-108}} | In general, when we trace back well ordered adaptability to a cause, we seek this cause in a thought-process; other explanation we have not, but thought itself I at least can only regard as a proceeding in the interior of ponderable matter. The impossibility of explaining thought from the movements of matter in space will be apparent to every one on an unprejudiced dissection of interior perception; the abstract possibility of such an explanation may, however, be here conceded. | ||
No one will deny that adaptability (Zweckmässigkeit) is perceived on the earth. The question thus arises, Whither have we to transpose the thought-process, which is the cause of this adaptability? | |||
We are here concerned only with conditional purposes, in limited times and spaces; unconditioned purposes find their explanation in an eternal Will, not generated in a process of thought. The only adaptability whose cause we perceive is that of our own actions. It arises from the willing of the purpose, and the consideration of the means. | |||
If, now, we find a body consisting of ponderable matter, in which there is a consummate system of relations of action to purpose, we can accept in explanation of this adaptability an enduring, individual thought-process; and this hypothesis will be most probable if (1) these adaptabilities are not already complete (Tum Abschluss kommen) in parts of the body; and, (2) there is no reason to seek the cause of them in a larger whole, to which the body belongs.<sup>*</sup> | |||
“When the body of the lower soul dies,” says Fechner, “the upper soul takes up the lower from its life of perception into its memorial life (Erinnerungsleben).” The souls of dead creatures should thus form the elements for the soul-life of the earth. | |||
The different thought-processes appear to be distinguished principally through their temporal rhythm. If plants have souls (sind beseelt), their hours and days must be our seconds; the corresponding space of time for the earth-soul, at least for its external activity, embraces perhaps many thousands of years. So far as the historical memory of man reaches, all movements of the inorganic crust of the earth are still, indeed, explicable from mechanical laws. | |||
{{Style P-Subtitle|PSYCHOLOGICAL AND METAPHYSICAL.}} | |||
With every single act of thought something permanent,{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-108}} | |||
{{Footnotes start}} | |||
<sup>*</sup> This is, in fact, the definition of an organism, the parts being functional, and therefore not possessing in themselves an organic independence, which must, however, be ascribed to the whole.—'''(Translator.)''' | |||
{{Footnotes end}} | |||