I must state, in starting, that I pursued in my youth physical _and_ philosophical studies, particularly psychology, with equal ardor. There was hardly the question at that time of an experimental psychology, of a relation of psychological to physiological research. No more so did physics at that day think of a psychological analysis of the notions it was constantly employing. How the notions of “body,” “matter,” “atom,” etc., were come by, was not investigated. Objects were given of which physicists never questioned the inviolability and with which they unconcernedly pursued their labors. The fields of physical and psychological research thus stood _unconciliated_ the one by the side of the other, each having its own particular concepts, methods, and theories. No one questioned, indeed, that the two departments were connected in some way. _The way_, however, appeared an insoluble riddle; as it yet appears to Dubois-Reymond. Now although this condition of things was not such as to satisfy my mind, it was nevertheless natural that as a student I should seek to acquire tentatively the prevailing views of both provinces and put them into consistent connection with one another. I thus formed provisorily the view that Nature has two _sides_—a physical and a psychological side. If psychical life is to be harmonised at all with the theories of physics we are obliged, I thought, to conceive of the atoms as _feeling_ (ensouled). The various dynamic phenomena of the atoms would then represent the physical processes, while the internal states _connected therewith_ would be the phenomena of psychic life. If we accept in faith and seriousness the atomistic speculations of the physicists and of the early psychologists (on the unity of the soul), I still see hardly any other course to arrive at a half-way supportable monistic conception. It is unnecessary to set forth at length here what a prominent place the artificial scaffolding we employ in the construction of our knowledge assumes in these monadic theories as contradistinguished from the facts that deserve knowledge, and how poorly such theories satisfy in the long run a vigorous mind. As a fact, employment with this cumbrous artifice was in my case the means that effected very soon the appearance of my better conviction, already latently present.[34]