Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/223

No. 2.] otherwise explaining the fact of life, and by the view to which a true theory of knowledge inevitably leads, that all forms of external reality are but the phenomenal presentation of reality in our sensibility. Now, as all forms of being agree in the possession of an inner psychical life, we must ask what is the essential nature of this life. Obviously it cannot consist in self-consciousness, or even in consciousness; for, not to speak of inorganic things, the plant or the lowest forms of animal give no evidence of intelligence. The point of identity must be found, as Schopenhauer says, in will, which appears first as a blind force or impulse, then as the direction to particular ends, and finally as self-conscious effort penetrated and directed by intelligence. Thus will is at once the beginning and the end of psychical life: it is the one constant factor, present alike in the lowest and the highest form of being.

All things, then, have an inner life or soul. But what is soul? Certainly not a mysterious 'entity' or 'substance,' such as is maintained by the spiritualistic dogmatists. The term 'soul' is simply a name for the fact that for each being the various psychical events which constitute its inner life form a unity. Hence there is no meaning in saying that the soul is localized in a particular part of the body. Ideas are no more in the brain than they are in the stomach or in the moon. But psychical events no doubt accompany and correspond to corporeal events. This correspondence is thorough-going. The physical equivalent of the soul-life is the totality of physiological processes. For us, no doubt, our inner life appears as a thin chain of ideas, but to an intelligence which could contemplate the whole of our physical and psychical life, our soul-life would seem to consist of an infinitely complex unity of contemporaneous events, partly above and partly below the threshold of consciousness.

So far we have been dealing with the problem of Ontology, and now we must turn to the problem of Cosmology. Granting that every form of reality has an inner as well as an outer side, the question arises, whether all reality forms a single whole, or is merely an aggregate of independent parts. If we take the former view, we must adopt some form of teleology. Our author shows in a very conclusive way the inadequacy of the old conception of design, as held by Anthropomorphic Theism. The truth is, that since the promulgation of the Darwinian theory of development, that conception has become incredible. Does it follow that all teleology is excluded? That it does not follow may be seen, if we consider (1) that the very "struggle for existence" implies the will or effort to maintain the