"Most of our so-called 'psychologists' have little or no knowledge of these indispensable foundations of anthropology—anatomy, histology, ontogeny, and physiology.... Hence it is that most of the psychological literature of the day is so much waste-paper" (p. 34). "What we call the soul is, in my opinion, a natural phenomenon; I therefore consider psychology to be a branch of natural science—a section of physiology. Consequently, I must emphatically assert from the commencement that we have no different methods of research for that science than for any of the others" (p. 32). In this difficult Science of Psychology he evidently feels himself quite at home. He assumes easily and gratuitously that there is a material substance at the root of all mental processes whatever—called by Clifford 'mind-stuff,' (see, however, Chapter IV. below,)—and he then proceeds to lay down the law concerning ancient difficulties as follows:— "We shall give to this material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of 'psychoplasm.' "The psychic processes are subject to the supreme, all-ruling law of substance; not even in this province is there a single exception to this highest cosmological law. "The dogma of 'free-will,' another essential element of the dualistic psychology, is similarly irreconcilable with the universal law of substance" (p. 32). "The freedom of the will is not an object for critical scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an illusion, and has no real existence" (p. 6). Nevertheless, he realises that its apparent existence has to be accounted for somehow, and accordingly he adopts the view that has several times occurred to thinkers, viz., that the nucleus of all the faculties enjoyed by a complete organism must be attributed in germ or nucleus to the cells and even to the atoms out of which the organism is built up. His speculation as to the formation of a conscious organism, and to the real meaning of its apparent sense of right and wrong and its apparent control over its own acts, runs as follows, the will being reduced to attraction and repulsion between the atoms:— "Vogt's pyknotic theory of substance is that minute parts of the universal substance, the centres of condensation, which might be called _pyknatoms_, correspond in general to the ultimate separate atoms of the kinetic theory; they differ, however, very considerably in that they are credited with sensation and inclination (or will-movement of the simplest form), _with souls_, in a certain sense,—in harmony with the old theory of Empedocles of the 'loves and hatreds of the elements.'