A second objection raised against animism is that the soul acts consciously, with reflection, and with volition, and that its essential attributes are not found in most physiological phenomena, which, on the contrary are automatic, involuntary, and unconscious. The contradictory nature of these characteristics has obliged vitalists to conceive of a vital principle distinct from thought. Chauffard, agreeing here with Boullieu, Tissot, and Stahl himself, does not accept this distinction; he refuses to shatter the unity of the vivifying and thinking principle. He prefers to attribute to the soul two modes of action: the one which is exercised on the acts of thought, and hence it proceeds consciously, with reflection, and with volition; the other exercising control over the physiological phenomena which it governs, “by unconscious impressions, and by instinctive determinations, obeying primordial laws.” This soul is hardly in keeping with his definition of a conscious, reflecting, and voluntary principle; it is a new soul, a somatic soul, singularly akin to that _rachidian soul_ which, according to Pflüger, a well-known German physiologist, resides in each segment of the spinal marrow, and is responsible for reflex movements. _Twofold Modality of the Soul._—This twofold modality of the soul, this duality admitted by Stahl and his disciples, was repugnant to many thinkers, and it is this repugnance that gave rise to the vitalistic school. It appeared to them to be a heresy tainted by materialism—and so it was. In this lay the strength and the weakness of animism. It admits of a unique animating principle for all the manifestations of the living being, for the higher facts in the realm of thought, and for the lower facts connected with the body. It throws down the barriers which separate them. It fills up the gap between the different forms of human activity, and assimilates them the one to the other. Now this is precisely what materialism does. It, too, reduces to a single order the psychical and physiological phenomena, between which it no longer recognizes anything but a difference of degree, thought being only a maximum of the vital movement, or life a minimum of thought. In truth, the aims of the two schools are diametrically opposed; the one claims to raise corporeal activity to the dignity of thinking activity, and to spiritualize the vital fact; the other lowers the former to the level of the latter and materializes the psychic fact. But, though the intentions are different, the result is identical. Spiritualistic monism inclines towards materialistic monism. One step more, and the soul, confused with life, will be confused with physical forces.