Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/625

 FECHNER. 60^ scale of psychical life : beneath and about us are the souls of plants and animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and encompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The omnipres- ence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of escaping from the desolate " night view " of modern science, which looks upon the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around us with objective reality — as sensations of the divine spirit, to which everything that vibrates resounds and shines. The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of analogy. Similar laws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way for memory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life, and con- tinues active in it, elevated to a higher plane. Fechner treats the problem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider the fact of evil apart from the efifort to remove it. It is the spur to all activity — without evil, no labor and no progress. Fechner's " psycho-physics," a science which was founded by him in continuation of the investigations of Bernouilli, Euler, and especially of E. H. Weber, wears an entirely dif- ferent aspect from that of his metaphysics (the " day view," moreover does not claim to be knowledge, but belief — though a belief which is historically, practically, and theo- retically well-grounded). This aims to be an exact science 1 of the relations between body and mind, and to reach indi- i rectly what Herbart failed to reach by direct methods, that is, a measurement of psychical magnitudes, using in this attempt the least observable differences in sensa- tions as the unit of measure. Weber's law of the depend- ence of the intensity of the sensation on the strength of the stimulus — the increase in the intensity of the sensa- tion remains the same when the relative increase of the stimulus (or the relation of the stimuli) remains constant ; * • Fechner teaches : The sensation increases and diminishes in proportion to the logarithm of the stimulus and of the psycho-physical nervous activity, the latter being directly proportional to the external stimulus. Others, on the