1872; various treatises on Logic--in which
consciousness is based on the distinguishing activity, and the categories
conceived as functional modes of this--on Spiritualism, etc.]

The appearance of _materialism_ was the consequence of the flagging of
the philosophic spirit, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the
dissatisfaction of the representatives of natural science with the
constructions of the Schelling-Hegelian school. If the German naturalist is
especially exposed to the danger of judging all reality from the section
of it with which he is familiar, from the world of material substances and
mechanical motions, the reason lies in the fact that he does not find it
easy, like the Englishman for example, to let the scientific and the
philosophico-religious views of the world go on side by side as two
entirely heterogeneous modes of looking at things. The metaphysical impulse
to generalization and unification spurs him on to break down the boundary
between the two spheres, and, since the physical view of things has become
part of his flesh and blood, psychical phenomena are for him nothing but
brain-vibrations, and the freedom of the will and all religious ideas,
nothing but illusions. The materialistic controversy broke out most
actively at the convention of naturalists at Goettingen in 1854, when
Rudolph Wagner in his address "On the Creation of Man and the Substance
of the Soul" declared, in opposition to Karl Vogt, that there is no
physiological reason for denying the descent of man from one pair and an
immaterial immortal soul. Vogt's answer was entitled "Collier Faith and
Science." Among others Schaller (_Body and Soul_, 1855), J.B. Meyer in a
treatise with the same title, 1856, and the Jena physicist, Karl Snell,[1]
took part in the controversy by way of criticism and mediation. A much
finer nature than the famous leaders of materialism--Moleschott (_The
Circle of Life_, 1852, in answer to Liebig's _Chemical Letters_), and Louis
Buechner, with whose _Force and Matter_ (1855, 16th ed., 1888; English
translation by Collingwood, 4th ed., 1884) the gymnasiast of to-day still
satisfies his freethinking needs--is H. Czolbe (1819-73; _New Exposition of
Sensationalism_, 1855; _The Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge_, 1865),
who, on ethical grounds, demands the exclusion of everything suprasensible
and contentment with the given world of phenomena, but holds that, besides
matter and motion, eternal, purposive forms