In defining the appearance of the individual mind by the awakening of self-consciousness, we make it possible to distinguish, from the monistic physiological point of view, between "soul" (_psyche_) and "spirit" (_pneuma_). There is a soul even in the maternal ovum and the paternal spermatozoon (_cf._ chapter xi.); there is an individual soul in the stem-cell (_cytula_) which arises at conception by the blending of the parent cells. But the mind proper, the thinking reason, develops out of the animal intelligence (or earlier instincts) of the child only with the consciousness of its personality as opposed to the outer world. At the same time the child reaches the higher stage of personality, which law has for a long time taken under its protection and made morally responsible to society by education. This shows how erroneous and untenable, from the physiological point of view, are the ideas still embodied in our code as to the psychic life and the mind of the embryo and the new-born infant. They came mostly from the canon law of the Catholic Church. The dualistic ideas of the soul of the human embryo which were taught by the Church in the Middle Ages are particularly interesting from the psychological point of view; and at the same time they are of great practical importance even in our own day, since many of their moral consequences form an important element in canon law, and have passed from this into civil law. This influential canon law was formed under ecclesiastical authority from the decisions of Church councils and the decretals of the popes. It is, like most of the dogmas and decrees which civilization owes to this powerful hierarchy, a curious tissue of old traditions and new fictions, political dogmas, and crass superstition. It is directed to the despotic ruling of the uneducated masses and the exclusive dominion of the Church--a Church that calls itself Christian while thus acting as the very reverse of pure Christianity. The canon law takes its name from the dogmatic rules (or canons) of the Church. They involuntarily suggest the metal tubes which are so often the _ultima ratio regis_ in the wars of Christian nations. The canonical regulations of the Church, as implements of a crude spiritual despotism, have no more to do with the ethical laws of pure reason than the cannons of secular authorities have as naked organs of physical force. We might write the motto, _Ultima ratio ecclesiæ_ (the last argument of the Church), over the sacred _Corpus Juris Canonici_. A collection of later papal decretals which forms an appendix to the books of canon law was very happily given the official title of _Extravagantes_. Among the "extravagant" nonsense which the papacy included in canon law as a moral code for believers is its view of the psychic life of the embryo. The "immortal soul" is supposed to enter the soulless embryo only several weeks after conception. As theologians and metaphysicians are very much divided as to the period