What Darwin taught us in relation to animal life, viz., that there are no fundamental differences between species, that is taught by philosophy in regard to the universe. The understanding of the latter is rendered difficult by the habit of making a transcendental distinction between matter and mind. VIII UNDERSTANDING IS MATERIAL Whether we say that philosophy has the understanding for the object of its study, or whether we say that philosophy investigates the method of utilizing subjective understanding in order to arrive at genuine, correct, excellent, objective knowledge, that is only a matter of using different terms for the same process. It makes no difference whether we designate the object of our special science as a thing or as a process. It is much more essential to understand that the distinction between the thing and its action is in this instance of little consequence. According to modern natural science all existence is resolved into motion. It is well known now that even rocks do not stand still, but are continuously active, growing and decaying. The understanding, the intellect, is an active object, or an objective action, the same as sunshine, the flow of waters, growing of trees, disintegration of rocks, or any other natural phenomenon. Also the understanding, the thinking which takes place consciously or unconsciously in the human brain, is a phenomenon of as indubitable actuality as the most material of them. It cannot in the least shake our contention of the materially perceptible nature of intellectual activity that we become aware of this activity by an internal, not by an external, sense. Whether a stone is externally perceptible or thought internally, what difference does this slight distinction make in the incontestable fact that both perceptions are of equal material, natural and sense-perceptible kind? Why should not the action of the brain belong in the same category as the action of the heart? And though the movement of the heart be internal and that of the tongue of the nightingale external, what is to prevent us from considering these two movements from the higher viewpoint of natural or material processes? If the function of the heart may be referred to as material, why not the function of the brain? True, the present usages of language are in conflict with this mode of thought. But it must be remembered that every science comes into conflict with usages of language by progressive development. The discovery of every new thing in plant and animal life compels the discoverer to invent a new term or change the meaning of an old one. The term material has not had a well defined, but rather an indefinite meaning so far. Now, since it is necessary, in order to understand the function of the brain to remove it from the class of transcendental or metaphysical conceptions and assign to it a place among the material things, the question arises: What will be the most