soul, which consists in the spiritual nature of the former, is not
original.

Of the five constructive forms of the soul, which result from the varying
relation between stimulus and faculty, four are emotional products or
products of moods. If the stimulus is too small pain (dissatisfaction,
longing) arises, while pleasure springs from a marked, but not too great,
fullness of stimulus. If the stimulus gradually increases to the point of
excess, blunted appetite and satiety come in; when the excess is sudden
it results in pain. A clear representation, a sensation arises when the
stimulus is exactly proportioned to the faculty; it is in this case only
that the soul assumes a theoretical attitude, that it merely perceives
without any admixture of agreeable or disagreeable feelings. Desire is
pleasure remembered, the ego the complex of all the representations which
have ever arisen in the soul, the totality of the manifold given within me.
For the immortality of the immaterial soul Beneke advances an original and
attractive argument based on the principle that, in consequence of the
constantly increasing traces, through which the substance of the soul is
continually growing, consciousness turns more and more from the outer
to the inner, until finally perception dies entirely away. At death the
connection with the outer world ceases, it is true, but not the inner being
of the soul, for which that which has hitherto been highest now becomes the
foundation for new and still higher developments.

Like Herbart, on whom he was in many ways dependent, Beneke discussed
psychology and pedagogics with greater success than logic, metaphysics,
practical philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He combats the
apriorism of Kant in ethics as elsewhere. The moral law does not arise
until the end of a long development. First in order are the immediately
felt values of things, which we estimate according to the degree of
enhancement or depression in the psychical state which they call forth.
From the feelings are formed concepts, from concepts judgments; and the
abstraction of the categorical imperative is a highly derivative phenomenon
and a very late result, although the feeling of oughtness or of moral
obligation, which accompanies the correct estimation of values and bids
us prefer spiritual to sensuous delights and the general good to our own
welfare, grows necessarily out of the inner nature of the human soul. There
are two sources