The best illustration of this is furnished by what I might call the naïve disunion prevailing within psychology’s own camp. The various movements are not infrequently to be found fighting against one another, like different divisions of the same army in the darkness of night. One party says: “In the analysis of the sensations lies all our salvation. Out of them only can we have consciousness arise synthetically, and, all said and done, up to our time science has achieved nothing just because she has neglected this natural prerequisite to all possibilities of knowledge.” The which {sic}, it maybe remarked in passing, is somewhat cold comfort after more than two thousand years of labour! Then suddenly a counter-movement interjects: “The sensations are what one may not seek to analyse.”[18] Well, that is what I should call plagiarizing the words of the _bon dieu_ in the Garden of Eden: “Of the tree of knowledge thou shalt not eat.” If I may not lay finger upon the fount of my existence, what boots to me the never so broad but turbid stream of the lower levels? If one compares with this utter lack of success the indubitable honesty of the effort, the entire phenomenon “science” assumes something of an air of sublime absurdity, of melancholy enthusiasm, such as ever and again recalls to one’s mind the immortal hero of Cervantes’ romance--vigorous, single-hearted effort from a mistaken standpoint, directed towards a mistaken end. As a matter of fact, however, in these latter days the impossibility of the old path with reference to the problem of consciousness seems to be perceived. But the new path upon which in their need men have entered is an utterly paradoxical one; it is the modern theory of the cell endowed with consciousness in the shape of the faculty of memory. Seeing no possibility whatever of explaining consciousness into the cell material without more ado they have recourse to the device of making the cell set out on its campaign, so to speak, with the faculty of memory in its knapsack.[19] In this manner they rid themselves once for all of the mischief-maker, “consciousness”; and with astounding simplicity change ground to a position whence they can fight out the battle about a world-theory after the fashion of army manœuvres, all according to programme upon any lines that may be desired. “Give me a chaos and out of it I will make you a world,” says Kant in his _Prolegomena_. “Give me a cell and out of it I will make you a Goethe or a Newton,” says the modern biologist. The necessary arrangements are all made, the “stern wrestle with the problems of life” can begin in the shape of fantasies drawn from the _Ratskeller_ of the Alma Mater. If one hews out the building stones to one’s own fancy, one may indeed erect systems--a mechanics, a thermo-dynamics, but never a genuine world-conception.