ness
of law which can no longer be denied to the psychical. And from this
latter standpoint sharp protests are raised against all materialistic
distortions. The only thing denied is the old idea of the "influxus
physicus," the idea, that is, that mind can operate beyond itself and take
effect on the physical world, and conversely the physical world upon it.
This again is regarded as a breach of the law of the conservation of
energy. For if the bodily affects consciousness, then at a given moment a
certain amount of energy must be transformed into something that is not
energy. And if consciousness affects the bodily, a process of movement
must suddenly occur, for which no previous equivalent of energy can be
shown.

This standpoint is most impressively set forth in Paulsen's widely read
"Introduction to Philosophy." The same ideas form the central feature in
the work of Fechner, which is having such a marked renaissance to-day.

It seems as though all higher estimates of spirit, even the religious
estimate, could quite well rest upon this basis. For full scope is here
given to the idea that mind and the mental sciences have their own
particular field. God, as the absolute all-consciousness and
self-consciousness, comprehending within Himself all individual
consciousness, is thought of as the eternal correlate of this universe in
space. And the theory has room also for a belief in immortality. Of all
imaginative attempts to make the idea of immortality clear and possible,
undoubtedly that of Fechner is the grandest and most effective. And it,
too, is based entirely upon the idea of parallelism. (Yet as a matter of
fact it could be shown that neither mortality nor immortality really fit
into the scheme of this conception.)

Though its main features are very similar as set forth by its various
champions, this theory differs according to the way in which this
astonishing and mysterious co-ordination, this parallelism itself, is
explained. How is it that "thought" and "extension" can correspond to one
another?

The answer may be either naively dogmatic, that this is one of the great
riddles of the universe, and that we must simply take it for granted.
Others declare with Spinoza that the two series of phenomena are only the
two sides of one and the same fundamental being and happening, which may
be designated as _natura sive deus_, and that what is inwardly unified
expresses itself outwardly in these two forms of being. B