part of the eternal heat
of the metal can be now and forever transposed into the living motion of
our soul." This whole manner of investigation and proof is one of those
numerous unconscious logical fallacies which, introduced by Hegel, have
gradually attained a certain title by possession. From the observation of a
process, they abstract a characteristic, as general as possible,--as, for
instance, from the observation of life the characteristic of motion; then
they find that the process has the characteristic in common with still
other processes--as, for instance, the self-motion of the living has the
general characteristic of motion in common with the objective motion of the
lifeless; and then they persuade themselves that the process which they try
to explain is really explained by having found a quality of this process as
comprehensive as possible. And in order to hide the falsity of the
conclusion, they also give to the general idea, which they have found to be
a characteristic of that process, the same name which the special process
has,--as, for instance, they call motion life, no matter whether it is a
motion of itself or a being moved, no matter whether it is performed from
within or in consequence of an impulse from without; and then they say:
"Behold, life is explained; life is nothing but motion." But it can be
readily seen that life is also motion, and has therefore this
characteristic in common with everything which is moved; but that the
specific of that motion called life--namely, self-motion in consequence of
an impulse renewing itself from within, and, as Fechner shows, {138}
self-motion in a rotatory direction of the molecules, precisely the same
thing which in distinction from other motions we call life,--is not
explained, but simply ignored.

There is still another bold hypothesis which we have to mention--namely,
_that the organic germs were once thrown from other spheres upon the earth
by aerolites_. Years ago this idea was declared by Helmholtz to be
scientifically conceivable; then it was formally asserted and brought into
general notice by Sir William Thompson, in his opening address before the
annual assembly of the British Association at Edinburgh, in 1871, but
rejected as formally and materially unscientific by Zoellner, in the preface
to his work, "Nature of Comets," and again defended by Helmholtz in his
preface to the second volume of a translation of Thompson and Tait's
Theoretical Physi