rge as and, according to
its value, still larger than, that of the material world, which, not on
account of its scientific inaccessibility, but in conformity with its own
peculiar nature, entirely withdraws itself from the mechanical view. It is
the realm of _psychical life_; and, still more decidedly and more
evidently, the _realm of mind_. As far as our observations go, the law of
{153} causality reigns here also, and here also nothing takes place without
a cause. But as here the _realm_ in which the causal law reigns is no
longer material nature, so even the _form_ in which it is active is no
longer that of mechanism. For we certainly cannot understand mechanical
effect to be anything else than an effect of something material upon
something material, whose uniformity of law can be exactly estimated
mathematically as to size and number. Now if the application of mechanism
to the psychical and spiritual realm does not express anything except the
certainly quite insidious idea that here also causality reigns, it is
nothing else but the substitution of another idea for the word
mechanism--an idea which it never had in the entire use of language up to
this time, and by the substitution of which the proof for a mechanism of
the mind is not given, but surreptitiously obtained in a manner similar to
the before-mentioned attempt of Preyer, surreptitiously to obtain the proof
for the origin of life.

But if the mechanical explanation of the functions of the mind really means
that they also consist in an effect of the material upon something
material, and that this effect can be mathematically estimated as to size
and number, it is an assertion which has first to be proven, but which
cannot be proven and cannot be allowed even as an hypothesis, as a problem
for investigation, because it contradicts our whole experience. And it
contradicts not only the conclusions drawn from most natural appearances,
which, as is well known, are deceitful and even tell us that the sun goes
around the earth, but it contradicts the philosophical analysis just as
much and even still more directly and decidedly than {154} the direct
impression--as became clear to us at the lowest point of contact between
the material and the psychical, viz., at sensation, when we showed the
impossibility of scientifically explaining the origin of sensation.

It is easy to see what facts made it altogether possible to produce such a
materialistic psychology and to gi